How Homeschooled Teenager, Malcolm Keith, Built a Mastermind That Now Shares a Stage With Russell Brunson

Last updated on July 10th, 2026 at 12:59 am

Growing Up in the Room

Malcolm’s upbringing has been unique compared to other teens his age. Instead of sending him to a classroom every day, his parents decided to homeschool him. As owners of a martial arts dojo, this gave them the freedom and flexibility to bring him along to business events starting when he was only nine.

At first, he wasn’t paying much attention. He and his sister sat in the back with their toys or a book while the adults listened to speakers. But slowly, he started listening too. Then he started taking notes.

His parents could have pushed him hard into the family business. Instead, they made it something he could opt into, at his own pace, without pressure. They built his curiosity instead of forcing it, and made business and events fun for the whole family. So naturally, he picked it up by being immersed in it. Sales meetings, back office work, dojo events, even business masterminds.

The Event That Changed What Malcolm Wanted

Malcolm spent most of his childhood around adult business owners. Then, at 15, he finally was exposed to something different.

He went with his family to Unlock the Secrets, an event Russell Brunson built around bringing your whole family. And for the first time, Malcolm saw other teenagers who weren’t just curious about business. They were already doing it.

The event had round tables, and adults sat in on them, but mostly just to let the teens talk. That’s where Malcolm got to know the other kids there, and it changed what business meant to him.

Before, it was something the adults around him did. After, it became something he wanted for himself.

Learning the Skill Before Having the Idea

Wanting it was the easy part. What came next was harder, and it started with a rule his dad had given him.

Learn the skill before you have the idea.

Most people start a business backward. They fall in love with a product or a passion first, then figure out how to sell it later, if they figure it out at all. Malcolm’s parents wanted him to do the opposite. Learn to sell first. And then let the idea show up whenever it wanted to.

So at 16, Malcolm got certified in ClickFunnels. Mostly because ClickFunnels 2.0 had just come out, and he wanted to learn how to use it. That certification put him in front of people from his parents’ network who needed funnels built, including James Curran, who brought Malcolm on to build funnels for his own clients.

That was the first time Malcolm worked for himself. And he didn’t know it yet, but he was about to need that skill for something a lot bigger than client work.

Building a Room for Other Teens

The funnel work gave him something to do. But Malcolm still went home from those events and had nobody his age to talk business with.

So at the next Unlock the Secrets event, he did something about it. He made a Facebook post and organized a meetup in one of the hotel lobbies. Nobody called it a mastermind yet. It was just a group of teens sitting together.

After that, he started a Discord group and invited everyone he’d met.

That’s when it hit him. He was building the same room his parents had built for him growing up. Except this time, he was the one doing the building, for other teens instead of himself.

Turning a Free Discord Into a Paid Mastermind

The Discord group grew. And it didn’t take long before people inside it started telling Malcolm he should charge for it.

But that was hard to hear at first. Who was he to charge his friends money for something they were already part of? That’s the question he kept running into.

His parents were the ones who talked him through it. They pointed out what he’d already done that nobody else had. Pulling other teens away from their parents’ tables to sit together. Starting a group when nobody else had bothered. That alone made him qualified.

Discord stayed free for about a year. Then he opened a paid founding member spot. Today, the Teen Mastermind costs five thousand dollars a year, and that gets you the Discord, weekly Zoom calls, guest speakers, recordings, and what he calls a success path.

Something shifted the moment it became paid. The people who paid were the people who paid attention. And the ones who weren’t really a fit just drifted off.

What Rose Proves About the Room He Built

Not everyone who joined jumped in right away though. Rose almost didn’t come to that first meetup at all, but her mom made her go.

For a while after that, she stayed quiet in the Discord group. Then she decided she wanted to write a book, and got it finished before the next Funnel Hacking Live. She wrote a second book and finished that one before the first Teen Mastermind Live.

Since then, Rose has spoken at every one of Malcolm’s live events.

Malcolm says the best part of running the mastermind is watching kids like Rose come out of their shell. She didn’t get more confident because someone told her to be. She got more confident because she was surrounded by other teens who were doing the thing, and that made it feel normal to try it herself.

Turning an Idea Into a Live Event

Rose’s story played out over Discord messages and Zoom calls. But Malcolm had started thinking about getting the whole group together in person, not just online.

The idea came from a different event. Malcolm was at Mastermind in Paradise, listening to Dr. Benjamin Hardy talk about setting ten-times goals, and he started wondering what it would look like to run his own live event for the teen mastermind, ninety days from that moment.

He waited about sixty days before booking speakers and putting together a promo video. Then the first Teen Mastermind Live happened, in Roseburg, Oregon, a town so small it doesn’t even have its own airport.

Fifty people showed up. Half of them flew in from out of state.

By the end of it, some of the teens were crying because they didn’t want to say goodbye yet. That’s what convinced Malcolm to do it again. Every three months, in a different state each time.

Full Circle at ClickFunnels HQ

After Oregon, the group kept going. They went to Andy Elliot’s facility in Arizona next, where Malcolm got an award with his own logo on it, plus a dog tag. Then Illinois, close to where a lot of the mastermind’s members live.

The next stop is ClickFunnels headquarters, in August. And Russell Brunson is going to speak there, at Malcolm’s event. The same person whose events started all of this five years earlier.

This isn’t the first time Malcolm has stood on a stage next to Russell’s name though. A few years back, Malcolm and the other teens put together a pitch video for Russell, and it led to Russell inviting them to host roundtables at Funnel Hacking Live.

Now Russell is the one being invited onto Malcolm’s stage.

What This Means if You’re Starting From Nothing

Malcolm’s story isn’t really about being a teenager. It’s about what happens when you stop waiting to feel ready.

He didn’t wait until he had a business plan, or a big audience, or even much money. He built a Discord group before he had anything to sell in it. He built a checkout link before he had a full funnel. And he asked to speak on a stage before anyone told him he’d earned it.

That’s the pattern underneath everything Malcolm built. He acted first and let the confidence catch up later, once he’d seen it work.

So if you’re sitting on an idea and waiting for the right moment, or the right amount of experience, Malcolm’s story is a pretty clear sign that the moment doesn’t usually show up first. You go looking for it.

And once you’re ready to build something around that idea, ClickFunnels makes it easy to start with just one page, the same checkout link Malcolm started with, and add the rest as your audience grows. You don’t need the funnel figured out on day one. You just need a way for people to say yes.

Try it free for 14 days and see how far one page can take you.

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