Reflections on a move towards hope as opposed to our move towards hopelessness.
On this special moving day episode Russell talks about moving into his new office and why this time is so different from the last time he moved offices.
Here are some of the things you will hear on today’s episode:
So listen below to hear Russell reminisce about some of the struggles he’s had in the past.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and welcome to a moving day of Marketing in Your Car.
All right, so today, I’m actually in the car right now. In the back of my car, I’ve got a bunch of my computer monitors and stuff. And I’m actually moving across town to a brand new office and it’s exciting.
We have the movers actually coming tomorrow to do all the heavy lifting of desks and all that crap that I don’t want to do but I got my own computer and monitors because I don’t want them to screw that up, so heading over there right now, and I’m driving and just reminiscing on some stuff.
And I wanted to share because I thought, hey, you guys like hearing all the random thoughts that come out of Russell’s head, right? So I apologize but that’s what we’re going to do because I think I got something that could benefit some of you guys.
I was just talking to Brent on my team as we’re packing up the cars and kind of walking. We actually moved into this building about four years ago now which is crazy. I can’t believe it’s that far away. When we left to come to this office, it was under completely different circumstances.
At the time, a year prior, I had about 100 employees, we were doing about a million dollar a month. Everything was cranking. We were having some fun. Looking back now, we weren’t very profitable with that big of a staff but we were making money and serving people, and all that kind of thing.
One day -- it was in January -- all of our merchant accounts got frozen, got shut down and just gone. It’s kind of a long, the next 12 months of my life was by far some of the hardest of my life. I had to watch as my friends and family members walked away from me, watched as my business I had built kind of disappeared.
I watched as bill collectors and angry people - all this stuff just happened. It was crazy. I thought I was going to have to go bankrupt but luckily I didn’t which was kind of a whole story for another day. But after a year of trying to keep everything open and keep things sustained, one day, I just came to the realization that I couldn’t.
We got hit with on top of all the debt and all the other issues that had come because of not having merchant accounts, and not having the ability to process money and still having payroll, staff, coaching clients, and all this craziness, on top of it, we got hit with an IRS bill of crazy money, like $150,000, $200,000, something just ridiculous. And all these things were collapsing around beside me.
I remember just being in a state of fear, panic, nervousness, and just hopelessness to be honest. I was sitting in my home. I knew that we had to leave out of the office we were in. We had a huge office, over 20,000 square feet. It was amazing.
It overlooked all of Boise. It was the coolest office in Boise by far. I knew I had to leave. I knew that if I left, they were probably going to sue me because we still had time left on our lease and contract but we had to. We couldn’t cover the monthly payments anymore, and all these.
I’m painting not even a very deep picture of where it was at, but it was crazy. I was sitting there one night on my little iPad trying to find an office we could move into. It was just crazy. I found this little office space that was four minutes from my home.
It was one or two in the morning I found it. I got out of bed, jumped to my car, and I drove to it. It was less than five minutes from my house. I looked through the windows, and I was like, “This is it. This is the office we have to rebuild and get back to basics.”
The next morning, I called the people up. We were able to rent it. It was about one tenth the size of our old office. At that time, we had gone from 100 employees down to about 20. We had to jam 20 employees in this little tiny space. We had to rebuild and figure things out.
Over the next year or so, I had to fire employee after employee. We got smaller and smaller to the point we ended up with about seven people at one time. And I said, “You know, these are seven people I have to have to run my business. Everyone else was nice to have. These are the got to haves. I can’t go any lower than this.”
I also made a rule at the time. I will not ever hire again. That was kind of my thing. For the last four years, we’ve been in that building and for the first year or two was trying to rediscover who we are and what we were doing. Then I went to this phase of wanting to be in every business possible.
We launched like 15 different companies in every niche you could dream of and did a lot of stuff, had some successes, nothing that was really huge. Then two years ago or so is when we launched our supplement which became very successful as a lot of you guys know. We became insane about split testing.
Then we came out with our split testing book which helped. We relaunched our coaching program which has been amazing. We launched ClickFunnels last year which is growing like nothing ever, better than anything I ever dreamed of.
Today as we’re moving, I just had this nostalgic feeling of four years ago when we were moving into this building. At that time, I was so nervous and scared, fearful and hopeless, and just afraid of what my future was going to look like. Now four years later as we’re moving out and we’re moving to a new office, just the different perspective, how excited I am about life and about business, and about who we’re serving, and about the future.
It just was so interesting to me because of today. I had this emotional thing. I just wanted to share it with you guys. I think the main reason why I wanted to share it is because I know that all of you guys are in different spots in your business. Some of you guys are in the spot where I’m at right now where things are going amazing and you feel hopeful, excited, and this desire to serve people, and try to change the world.
But some of you guys I know are on the opposite side where I was at, where you’re falling down a black hole and you don’t know how you’re going to get out, where you’re going to go, and you’re scared, hopeless, and you just have so much fear. I remember waking up some days and being so scared to go in the office because I didn’t know what to do and how to motivate people.
What pep talk was I going to give my team this time to try to convince them that we were going to be okay? How many times I would have to do that, over and over again. It was crazy hard. I hope that if you are on that backslide and you’re in the spot with your business or your life, it’s tough. You’re struggling.
You can’t see the future and the future makes you scared. I just want to share this message with you to hopefully give you some hope. You know, they always say that the night is darkest right before the dawn. It’s true. There were times where I couldn’t even tell you, it felt like I was in the pit of despair.
Now, such a short period of time later, I just feel so much hope, excitement, and passion. Again, if you are in that spot now, I just want to let you know that you’re not far. Keep trekking through it. Don’t give up. Keep moving forward because the light is on the other side.
When you get back to that spot, it’s amazing and it makes it all worth it. I look back at those things now that we had to go through, and it sucked. It was painful, it was embarrassing, it was hard but if it wasn’t for those things, we wouldn’t have been able to create and do what we did that got us to the spot we’re at right now.
I’m so grateful for those things. I always look back at the day when we lost our merchant accounts as the worst day in my life but I also look at it as the best day of my life because it is what caused us to change, and it was a necessary change. For me, it helped me to find out who my true friends were, who were people I could count on, who were people I could trust, who were people that cared about me and not about the paycheck they were getting which was important, and it also gave us the ability to think clearer.
It’s hard. First of all, I didn’t feel like I was thinking clear but at some point, you got to step back. For us, we had to cut all ties of everything and say, “Look, none of this stuff is working. We got to figure out something else. What is it?” and give us the ability to reset and start over.
I remember about that time, in the middle of this whole thing, Tony Robbins had put out a video about New Year’s time. In the video, he got up there and said, “Hey, it’s the new year.” It was him and his wife Sage.
He said, “It’s a new year. We can change any time of the year that we want but the new year always gives us a new outlook and the ability to think and to do things like that.” He says, “You know, I basically want to give you guys permission to change.” He said, “If you’re in a relationship you don’t like, change it. If you’re in a business you don’t like, change it. If you’re struggling with whatever, not happy with your physical appearance, change it.”
I remember sitting there thinking, “You know, he’s right. I can just change it. I’m so stuck on what we were doing, the model tied to this thing that I didn’t think about the fact that I could just change it.” That’s what’s so cool about what we do.
I’m guessing that if you’re listening to this, you’re an entrepreneur. You create your own destiny. If that’s you, then understand that you are an entrepreneur. You create your own destiny. You can create, build, become, and be whoever you want.
Use this as an opportunity first off to hopefully give you a glimmer of hope, and second off, give you the ability to sit back and look at what’s happening around you. If you need to and you want to, then just make those changes.
I’ll give you permission. Just like Tony gave me permission, I’m going to give you permission. I promise you guys that the light is there. It’s not far off. You got to stay the course, keep on working. Work through it and focus on serving other people.
If you do that, you’ll get to where you need to be. That’s it. That’s a wrap for today. I hope that it will help some of you guys. I’m excited to be in the new office. My future podcasts will be coming from the new office which is exciting.
We’re about to launch the new FunnelHacker podcast which is cool. I got the first episodes in the can. I think we’re going to be launching that probably early next week is the goal. So you guys will see that as well coming out. I’m sure you’ll see videos and stuff from the new office and everything as well.
It’s exciting. It’s fun. I appreciate you guys listening to my random thoughts for the day. I hope that it’s been a value to you. I appreciate you guys as listeners and subscribers. I hope you got the Dot Com Secrets book. I’m excited for you guys to get it. I’m excited to share that with you guys as well.
That’s it. I will talk to you guys soon. I’ll see you in the new office.
Want to know some of the secret ninja stuff happening inside of ClickFunnels?…
On this episode Russell talks some cool stuff that is happening at the hack-a-thon, including some awesome stuff that is coming up in Clickfunnels.
Here are some fun things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen below to get excited about the awesome upgrades rolling out on Clickfunnels soon.
---Transcript---
Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you to Marketing In Your Car.
So excited for today. It’s funny, there’s a couple of times I wanted to send you guys messages this week, but to be honest I did a Google Hangout with Todd Brown, the other day. And he followed my Marketing In Your Car at like 3 in the morning when I was driving home from the office. And every night this week I’ve been driving home about 3 in the morning.
I keep wanting to do them, I’m like, no, I’ve got to do it at normal times, so Todd doesn’t think I’m, like, a workaholic. But, alas, turns out I’m a workaholic, and it’s 10:00 at night, I’m heading back in to the office for another one. I think this is the fourth night in a row, but it’s kind of all blurring together. But no, it’s fun. Amazing stuff is happening. We have our whole Ted, Deb, team, and all my partners for ClickFunnels flew in to town.
And we’re, they’re here for, I think, ten days or so. And we’re doing some amazing, amazing, amazing things. And so, because of that we had to put sleep on the back burner for two weeks, then we’re going to crash and just be done. But it’s just, it’s been amazing. Like we listed out on the whiteboard, like, things we wanted to implement. Some new features, new things, bugs we needed to kill.
And just a bunch of stuff like that. And I’ve been watching these guys, and again, I don’t have any skills, so I can’t do much of it. I’ve been watching these guys and they’ve been going through and just, like, crazy things that are amazing. And in fact, it’s 10:00 at night, I’m so tired right now but I’m going back in the office because there’s so much energy and synergy, and things happening, and I want to be a part of it.
I want to, just so exciting. And so, and I don’t do, not that I do nothing. I play my part, but yeah, as far as the technical stuff, they build it on. It’s amazing what they’re doing. So, a couple of just sneak peeks for you guys, you know what’s happening. It’s amazing. So the first thing we finished off with the affiliate platform. Some of you guys know that one of the things that everyone is asking for and that I personally wanted for a long time, was to be able to run affiliate programs through ClickFunnels.
We didn’t really have an option, we had to use a third party system like LeadDyno or things like that. Which are just, they’re annoying to, you know, it’s expensive, it’s another plug-in, and it just doesn’t really work that great. And so finally we decided best, let’s go and conquer that. So, we build it out initially before the actual book launch, and we’ve been beta testing it to the book launchers, it’s been working flawlessly, which has been great news.
I was a little bit nervous, to be honest, but it’s been working flawlessly, and then what’s cool about it is – sorry, I’m filling my gas so all the people around me are looking at me like I’m crazy. You guys know I’m not crazy, right? Anyway, so, yes, because the use of affiliates for the book launch has been working awesome. So first thing when they got here is they worked on finalizing — I picked the wrong gas. Okay.
So we’re talking finalizing the affiliate system and getting all the UI working and everything, it looks awesome. So we’re going to get some beta testers over the next week or two, to start testing it out and see if they can get it to work flawlessly as well. And as we do that, then we’re going to open that up, hopefully soon, to ClickFunnel’s members, which is going to be amazing.
So you can run it on affiliate programs, and it’s pretty slick. So, that’s one of the big ones. That was the first day, we got that all finalized and done. Then we started focusing on what I think was, like, the last missing piece that makes ClickFunnels ClickFunnels. And it was the, you know, engine. The, you know, sequencing. Because you know, if you’ve been using it, there’s a really cool ability where someone joins the list you can have it send out.
You know, these email sequences and just basic segmenting, so, like, auto-webinars like that, they show up at the webinar, they send out this email sequence. They don’t, send out this one. And, you know, if they opt in here then they buy, and you can move them to a different list. You can do some basic stuff but that’s kind of all it was. And then we had this thought about a week ago, before they came out, so, like, what if we did a couple of things?
What if we could create a way where you could edit your emails inside of the ClickFunnel’s editor? And that was the first thing, of a thousand possible. In fact, last night, about 2 in the morning, we may have figured out how to make that possible, and we were all going crazy because it was possible. And as a matter of fact, I just got an email about ten minutes from them.
The email was created in the editor and it’s the most amazing looking email I’ve ever seen, in my 12 years of doing this. Just amazing. So now you have the ability to edit your emails in the email editor, which is amazing. And now, and the next thing to build out is you can do broadcasts, instead of lists. And things like that, which is, like, the last missing piece.
And I can’t tell you guys how cool it is. If you’ve read the Dot Com Secrets book, you know what I’ve been teaching about forever. I always talk about the best way that I think you can do sequencing is someone joins your list, you send out a soap opera sequence. And what’s cool is now you can do that in ClickFunnels. When someone opts in the funnel, you can build out a whole sequence there, in the funnel.
So the initial soap opera sequence goes out over 7, or 10, or 20, or how many days you want to do that. And you can do some basic segmenting. So they buy a product, you can take them off, you can move them, things like that. But what’s cool is that at the end of the segment, or the middle, or wherever you want, you can either copy or delete them, or move them to another list.
And so the next thing I always teach people is that after someone goes through your soap opera sequence, you transition them to your broadcast, like your David Seinfeld emails. And so, but most people it’s like, I can never do that because they’re no auto-responder software that really does that. Where now in ClickFunnels you can. It’s amazing. So as soon as I’m finished with a sequence, you move them so now they’re on your broadcast list, and they get broadcast.
And you can set it where as soon as they, if you want, as soon as they join a new funnels list, you can pause it. It will pause the broadcast emails as you’re sending things out. And then when they get to the end of it, then boom, they’re just back on the broadcast for them. So they’re getting just your soap operas for that funnel and then pause it for the broadcast, or vice versa. There’s a million different things you can do but that’s what I’m going to use it.
That’s so exciting, and just the beginning, like this, that part of the market automation will get better and better. It’s kind of the first phase of it. And it’s just amazing. You can set up sequences where they, so they hit this page, now cue up this, you know, email series to go out. They hit this page, or if they go here, you now have different sequences and different things, and it’s amazing.
Like I said, this is the first big piece in our marketing automation suite. In the near future it will be even smarter where someone joins your list, it will go out there, it will lead score, it will figure out, you know, how many subscribers they have, how much money they make, what neighborhood they live in, whatever it is. All the demographics, cycle graphics, social graphics, all those kinds of things, they’ll pool back in there.
And from that, you can customize your funnels. So you can say, hey, somebody joins my list and they have over 100,000 fans on Twitter and make at least X amount of dollars a year, she’ll miss up so, but if not, she’ll miss up so. So that way, people make over $100,000 a year, so you’re a high ticket upsell where people that don’t only see your, you know, your cheaper upsell or whatever it might be.
I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. And the best thing is I have different email sequence based on it, and it’s just awesome. So, anyway, but the first step email broadcast part should be done tonight. That was the message I got back from [Inaudible 07:03] tonight, is that all the email stuff is done, so that’s close. I’m going to be beta testing, you guys will see me doing it, and it’s going to blow your mind, so that’s coming. Some other cool things that are coming.
We’ve got the funnel marketplace. I think there will be people, probably people from the sound of my voice, who will make millions of dollars creating templates in ClickFunnels, and selling them through our marketplace. Literally, you can go create templates for realtors, or for info product people, or [Inaudible 07:29]. Whatever you build, that entire template, put it in the marketplace and boom, people can start buying it and you get paid every time someone buys your templates.
Which is going to be amazing. There’s so many cool things happening, you guys, I wish I could share and show all of them to you, but you will start seeing them. Start seeing them really, really soon. We’re excited. We’re aggressively growing, we finally got in some amazing, an amazing new developer help clear up some of the legacy of little issues that have been [Inaudible 07:56], bugging some of our members. And those should mostly be done, hopefully within the end of the month.
And then from that point forward we’re going to be aggressively rolling out the new feature sets, so we can compete with the core systems out there. We can compete with InfusionSoft, we can compete with Ontraport. We can compete with, you know, whoever else is out there in our way. And after these last two integrations done, the fill in email, my business will be 100% in ClickFunnels. I won’t need any other external party, service, to do anything.
And that’s amazing. So, I’m excited, you guys. You know, this podcast is not about teaching you guys anything tonight, or sharing anything outside, just my excitement. It’s some cool new things. Stuff that I wish I could share with the world, but the world is not ready yet. So, because you guys are here, because you’re my faithful Marketing In Your Car listeners, you guys get a chance to hear about the new stuff that’s happening and I hope that gets you excited as well.
So, the other thing, [Inaudible 08:47]. So much cool stuff I want to share with you guys. The new funnel hacking podcast, your funnel hacker podcast, I recorded the first video earlier this week and it’s awesome. So we’re going to be launching that, probably by the end of the week. It might be early next week, though. I have, we have a new on-boarding process in ClickFunnels that has to be done, where we’re giving away these funnel hacker t-shirts.
So I had to get that part of it done, first, before I can launch that. Because they’re kind of tied together. So, working on that, trying to get that done this weekend. So that will be live, and it’s going to be amazing, like, the first steps there, you guys, I drop bombs. I give away hundreds of thousands of dollars of free stuff. And every single week is going to be the same thing. I think it’s going to — I’m proud of it. It’s going to be amazing. So, there’s that.
And then, what else? What else is cool? Funnel hacking event, I hope you guys are coming to that. We have a bunch of our ClickFunnels members who are going to be showing off their funnels. I just finalized a schedule for that, it’s going to be amazing. So if you don’t have your tickets yet for that, please come to funnelhacking.com. It’s in Vegas, at the end of May. It’s basically me, on stage, for three days, teaching the back ends of all our funnels, how we do everything.
The strategies, psychology, I’ll be opening my pages then, we have ClickFunnels members who are making millions of dollars using those types of funnels. We’re going to get them to kind of show off their funnels and let you guys see behind the scenes of their businesses, and it’s going to be so cool. So I’m excited. If you guys like money, and you like cool stuff, you need to be there.
So, anyway, I’m at the office. I’m going to go have some fun for a couple of hours. I’m probably going to crash a little bit earlier tonight, because we’ve got a long weekend coming up and I want to be prepared for it. So I appreciate you guys. Have an awesome night, and we will talk to you guys soon.