The interesting truth behind what happens when you shift from being a generalist to a specialist.
On this episode Russell talks about how he struggled to grow his business until he was able to specialize on a particular piece of it. He also gives examples of other people he knows who have been able to do the same thing. Here are some of the other awesome things to look forward to in this episode:
So listen here to see why it’s good to be a specialist.
---Transcript---
Hey what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So excited to have you guys here tonight, I’ve got something really fun I want to share with you.
Alright so, I’m not sure the best way to kind of pre-set this up. But I want to share this with you because I think this is why a lot of people struggle. In fact, looking backwards now, it’s always easier to look hindsight. But looking backwards, I think this is one of the reasons why I struggled for so long, for probably almost a decade. The reason why is because I was trying to do the right things. I was trying to figure out how to provide value for my customers. So I was learning all sorts of things.
So as I was learning everything, I was trying to teach these things, trying to share things, which is good. I think a lot of times people like us, who are creators and who like to give and serve, it’s just kind of our nature to do that. So I don’t think it was bad, necessarily, but what happened, I started becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none.
I remember that when I first started getting into the internet marketing business and teaching stuff, I looked around at the marketplace at the time, and there were people that were specifically good at one thing. Jeff Walker was good at product launches, Frank Kern was good as mass control, they had all these different people, I can’t remember all the names right now. Perry Marshall was PPC, Brad Fallon was SEO and everyone is good at their one thing.
Then for me, I started learning all these things. John Carlton was copywriting, and I looked at all these people and they had one thing, but for me I was like, I was good at all those things. I knew how to do SEO and I knew how to do pay per click, I knew how to do the copywriting, I knew how to do product launches and I knew how to do all these different things. So I would try to sell myself, I would teach, I could do everything for you guys. And I would try to show them how to do everything.
And what’s interesting, as I tried to show people how to do everything, it was hard to really grow and scale my empire, or whatever you want to call it. And it was always weird to me because it was like, oh you can go there and get that one thing from that person, but you can get everything from me, come to me. And I think just because I loved it all, and I geeked out and I wanted share it all. But because no one could ever look at Russell and be like, “Russell’s the guy who does this.” They were like, “Russell is this guy that’s teaching all sorts of stuff.” Because I didn’t specialize, no one ever wanted to come to me. It was really interesting, and it was always frustrating to me because I was just like, I felt like I was as good if not better than most of these people, but because I didn’t specialize it was harder to get people in.
So that was me for a decade. I struggled because I knew I was good at all these different things, so because of that I wanted to do them all. Now fast forward to four or five years ago, whenever we started making this transition and as we launched Clickfunnels, I kind of became the funnel person. And it was strategic, because I was Clickfunnels it was like, “oh he’s the guy who does funnels.” And I started talking about it more, started sharing it more. I became obsessed with just that one piece.
So because of that, I started just going deep into funnels. I think that if you ask anybody now, they look at me as, “Russell’s the funnel guy.” And I wasn’t the first funnel guy, I wasn’t….honestly, I’d been teaching funnels for a decade prior to that right. But for some reason, it was just one of the things in my tool belt, but it wasn’t the thing. But when it became the thing, it changed everything in my business. All the sudden people who wanted to learn funnels came to me.
And I watched as my empire, my brand, my whatever you want to call it started growing dramatically. Now after I became the guy at this one thing, I was the guy at funnel building, what’s cool is I bring my audience is, but I can still do and still serve them in all the other things. But it all comes down to one core thing, funnel building, that was my thing. I was the guy about funnels. And then I can teach traffic, but instead of teaching traffic it was fill your funnel. Here’s how we fill your funnel full of people.
I could still teach copywriting, but it wasn’t just copywriting, it was funnel scripts. Here’s how we do the copy for your funnels. I can still teach traffic generators, all these different pieces that I was good at. I can still teach them all, but they are in the context of this one thing, funnel building. And when I did that, you’ve seen how things grew. I was able to build, we were able to build software around it and trainings and everything else. Masterminds, and coaching programs all around this one thing, which was the funnel.
Now once again, inside of that I can teach all the things I did before because now I was known for one thing that was the key.
So that was kind of the first thing I wanted to share with you guys. But it goes deeper than that. Today I had a chance, my wife’s out of town at a funeral for her grandma, so I was home with the boys, so I spent a lot of time with them, which was fun. Then I also went and worked out on my own and kind of just had some time to myself too, so I was listening to podcasts, and one of the podcasts I was listening a lot to was Dana Derricks. His podcasts and one of his books and stuff like that, and it’s been interesting because I’ve known Dana now for probably two, maybe three years.
He joined my inner circle and he spoke at Funnel Hacking Live this year. What’s interesting, when I met Dana, he was famous at the time for copywriting for Amazon listings. He was charging people 10 or 20 grand to write a listing in Amazon. And that was his thing. It was good, he was making really good money, but it’s one off things and he got tired of writing. So he was like, “I’m going to write a book and teach people how to do what I do.”
So he wrote this book and then he was like, instead of selling the book for really, really cheap, I’m going to sell it for really expensive. So he started selling these books teaching people how to do Amazon copywriting for like $500-$1000 per book. And started doing better, gave him leverage, started making more money.
But still the marketplace, it wasn’t the big market that he wanted. So then he transitioned from there to teach people, “You can write these really expensive books like I did.” So he created a book that he started selling for like $2500 that taught people how to write books and sell them for $1000 at a time. And that was a thing and it was doing well, but I don’t think it was ever huge.
And then how he started selling that book, he got a strategy that I think he got from me, and I got it from Chet Holmes and it was this concept of the Dream 100. Chet Holmes, there’s one chapter in his book called the Dream 100 and then inside of my training, I think I’ve referenced it four or five times, I’m a big believer in the Dream 100. In fact, in my book Traffic Secrets, the foundation of that is the Dream 100, which is kind of cool.
But then Dana took it and put it on steroids, he wrote a whole book about it, started doing it, did it for his own stuff and then started doing it for other people. And that became this new, if you look at Dana now, he has become the dream 100 guy. He has a whole back end thing for, I don’t know, 30 or 40 or 50 thousand dollars, where he actually does the dream 100 for you, and all these crazy things.
He’s got his book on dream 100 and now that’s become his thing. He may transition again in the future, who knows. But for right now, that’s becoming his thing. He’s got the book on front end, he’s got the done for you or done with you on the back end, all these things, and he’s going deep, deep into this one little piece. This one piece that was a chapter in Chet Holmes book, it was a chapter of what I share and he’s taken it and gone deep and built this huge business out of it now, and it’s all just because he is now the dream 100 guy and he’s focusing really, really tight on that, which is really fascinating to me.
I took my, here’s my scope of everything I could possibly do and when I took one piece of it and became the guy, when deep on that, that’s when everything blew up for me. For Dana, I think it’s the same thing. There was copywriting and then there was writing and all these different things, but when it became dream 100 traffic, this is how you get traffic, this is the best way to get traffic, the only way to get traffic, focus on the dream 100, dream 100, dream 100. That’s when things blew up. Now he’s got his dream 100 con coming out, which is a big event that he’s doing and all these things, but he’s going deep in that one vein and that’s where now people are coming in, because he’s the guy that does dream 100.
Anyway, I think that’s so cool. I saw recently also, Steven Larsen’s sister used to work for us, Marie Larsen, and she, and I don’t know everything, kind of her whole story. But what’s she’s done really good, I believe she was helping Steven with his podcast and getting published or whatever and she decided, “I’m going to become the podcast person.” So she went down and was like, “I’m going to come down and become the best person at podcasting.” So she did that. “I’m going to teach people to do podcasts, I’m going to help them do podcasts, I’m going to build a service around it. I’ll do my podcast about podcasts.” All this stuff, she started focusing on that one little piece, that one little sliver of the market, and because she’s now becoming that person people are coming to her and she’s helping them do podcasts.
And she went from not making any money online to overnight to making, I have no idea her revenue, so I’m guessing, $5000, 10000 a month or more and just….because that became the thing.
Another good one is Giada Golden who is a super cool person. She was doing relationship coaching and other things and having success in different pieces, but inside of the Dotcom Secrets book, there’s one little chapter about soap opera sequences and how to write these soap opera sequences, so she took that piece and started doing it for herself and then started doing it for friends and started having success and started geeking out on going deeper, deeper, deeper now.
She’s like, “I’m just going to be the person who writes these really amazing email sequences.” And then she did it for one person and it blew up for them and then someone else, and someone else. And everyone started hearing about it, and right now she’s making, again I don’t know her exact numbers, so I’m probably not even, I know it’s well. I know it’s more than $25,000 a month she’s making writing emails for people and going deep into that. And she hasn’t even created a course or training or anything, she’s just doing this service and making more than a doctor makes because she went super deep on that one little skill, that one little piece.
So for you guys, I think a lot of times we’re trying to become so good at everything, teach everything, do everything and that kind of thing, but look at the whole market, look at all the stuff out there and just pick the sliver that you could become the person at. That you could go the deepest, that you could be the best in the world at that one little thing. Figure out that one little piece and go deep. That’s the magic, it’s not in being a generalist who’s good at everything.
You can do that, and you should do that, because it’s good to have your skill set there, but the magic comes when you specialize in a little thing. Look at doctors for example, the more a doctor specializes in a thing, the more money they can charge. I’ve got a lot of people who live around me that are doctors and the ones that go to more medical school to specialize in a tinier thing, make more money than the generalists who are able to fix kind of everything.
So that’s the mindset I want you guys thinking through. In your market, how do you become the person, the sliver, the one little piece that you’re going to own, it’s going to be your thing, that you do better than everyone else, that you can geek out on. So when someone’s like, “What does so and so do?” “Oh he’s/she’s the person that does podcasting.” “..that does email sequencing.” “…that does weight loss for teenagers.” Whatever it is in your market. What’s that thing? Find that thing.
And don’t be nervous, “Oh it’s such a small segment.” The smaller it is, the more specific, the more specialized you become, the more valuable you are. When I became, when I was Russell Brunson, the guy who knew every type of marketing known to man, I was a generalist and I didn’t get paid what I feel like I was worth. When I specialized and became the funnel guy, that’s when my income exploded.
After you understand that, then it’s like you can layer on other things within the context of that, but you do it all from the same foundation. Like I said, with funnel building with me, that’s my thing but I can lay on copywriting, I can lay on traffic, lay on these other pieces still but they’re all tied. You’ll notice I pretty much have funnel in every one of my podcasts now. Funnel or secret, those two words are mine, they’re in everything, because those are the things that tie back to the one thing I’m the best in the world at.
So for you, just think about that. What is the thing you can become the best in the world at, and the smaller…you think about Dream 100 that’s such a small thing. For me it was a page and a half of one of my books, that’s as much effort I put into that. I wouldn’t have thought you could build a huge business with it. Because someone took that piece, that sliver and went super, super deep, boom. Dana’s building a multi-million dollar a year business out of it.
Giada took Soap opera sequences, that one little piece, five or six pages that she learned and then went deep with it, boom $25,000+ a month coming into her, just for writing emails. She’s beginning this journey that’s going to turn into a multi-million dollar business by actually doing this service and training and teaching all this other stuff around it. And then with others as well.
So just think through that you guys. Just start thinking aobut that for yourselves. You don’t have to be good at all these amazing things, just pick the little sliver that you’re going to become the best in the world at and go deep there. And the deeper you go, the more you master that craft, the more people are going to come to you because they’re going to want that thing because you’re the best in the world at that piece.
So I hope that helps. I appreciate you guys all. Have an amazing night and we’ll talk to you guys again soon. Bye everybody.