Step 1 starts with the bat-signal calling everybody to the bat-cave…
On today’s episode Russell talks about how he is using Trello and a bat signal to make all of his amazing ideas come to fruition. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode.
-Find out how Russell is using a bat signal to get his ideas out to his team.
-See how Trello is going to help keep Russell’s ideas organized so that every member does their part.
-And find out how you can make a similar system work for your own team.
So listen here to be let in on this awesome new system for getting Russell’s ideas out of his head and turned into funnels.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, I’m heading into the office today for a fun filled day. It’s going to be short because it’s almost Christmastime and we thought it would be fun to do something out of the ordinary. Everyone’s working their butt off and at the end of the day we’re going to leave early to go and see the Star Wars movie, which I’m freaking out about because I haven’t seen it yet. I want to see it so bad. Everyone’s got the positive and the negative reviews and all that stuff, and I don’t care what they say, there’s no way I’m not going to like it. I’m so excited.
So I’m pumped about that. Also, we have an acupuncturist who’s coming into the office to poke people all day. So I’ll be going through a session today, which I’m excited for. I don’t know how acupuncture works, but I had a miraculous healing from it one time, so I’m a big believer. And I’m not even hurt, I just feel like I want more people poking needles into my body apparently. So that’s exciting.
But what I want to share with you is the most exciting thing of all. So excited. It’s funny that we’ve grown as big a company as we have, with the fact that I’m not the best systems person in the world. I’m a big believer in it, just not ever been good at it. And Mr. James P. Freill, who is amazing. In the inner circle and been my friend for probably 3 years or so now. He came in originally and set up our Trello system, and it worked really good for a week, and me as a bad manager of it, it kind of fell apart. I hired him again later, he came back and set it up again, it worked for a while and then fell apart.
And then the third time I did it, so three times he’s helped me set this process up and the third time it lasted longer and then eventually kind of fell apart as well. So eventually I was just like, you know what, how about we just hire you to actually come and run this thing for us. So we hired him for the next six months and he literally moved to Boise, like a block from the office, which has been really fun.
And now he’s living next to me as we’re doing everything and systemizing everything. And what we’ve been focusing on is something I think everybody should do. Because as you know, you’ve listened to my opinion on this before, your business is not the thing that you do or sell, the business is the marketing of the thing you sell. So I think every company, the real company is your own marketing and advertizing agency. That is the company. And then what you sell is incidental, it doesn’t really matter. I can plug in chiropractic, I can plug in dentistry, I can plug in supplements, it doesn’t matter. Your business is the marketing.
So I was like, we need to build a marketing agency where we are our only clients. So we build this marketing agency out and there’s a funnel building team in the agency and there’s the traffic team, and it’s been really fun because he’s going through all the stuff we’ve been doing for the last decade that we redo every single time and he’s been trello-izing it and systemizing it and all sorts of stuff.
But the biggest thing we realized, when I have an idea, it’s like the idea, I have that moment where it’s like the flood of inspiration. And for me, I don’t know if it’s this way for everybody, I’m assuming that, I wasn’t this way when I began, but the longer I’ve done it and the more I’ve immersed myself in it, when I have the idea, I see the whole thing in my head. I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s not a vision, I don’t know, maybe it’s a vision. But it’s like, as soon as the idea comes, all these connections, all the things, everything I’ve learned and done and seen over the last 15 years in this business, it’s like as soon as the idea hits, I see perfect clarity what it looks like. I know, I see it really fast.
Then I freak out and try to explain it to everybody really fast, which is why I talk so fast, because I’m trying to get it out of my head before I forget it. I’m trying to explain the whole thing. And usually, whoever is closest to me, I grab and I explain it. So usually it’s Dave’s there, Melanie’s there, sometimes Dave’s there, Steven’s there, whoever. I just grab people and I’m like, “AHHH” and I freak out and tell them the whole thing.
And everyone’s excited and we go and run and do our things. But then we try to relay that to the next part of the team and then next part of the team. And eventually it’s like, playing telephone booth and everyone forgets and then, even Dave and Steven who were there initially, they’re like, “Remember on the white board we doodled this thing.” And they’re like, “What’s that square again for? I have no idea what’s actually happening. I remember you had a squiggly line here that was really important, but it just looks like a squiggly line now and I’m not sure exactly was it is.” And we always try to…we lose all this stuff.
So we’re like, man, how do we capture that moment of inception when the first big idea hits? How do we capture that so we don’t lose it? So in our trello process system now, it’s so cool. We’ve done it twice to test it out. But we literally…the way it works is like step one we have the aha moment, this is the idea. And the second we have that, I log into voxer and there’s a group with the entire agency in the voxer group and I literally send them the a gif of the bat signal. So boom, they get that which means, “oh my gosh, Russell had an idea. Get to the bat room.”
So then we set up the Zoom room, which is a Zoom room, we call it like the bat line or the bat cave or something like that. So as soon as I set out the bat signal then every…then I’ll send out the direct link to the bat cave, then everybody who is able to jumps on. And then right there I open the Zoom Room on my computer, from a white board I’m like, “Oh my gosh guys..” and I explain the whole thing as it happens and it records the whole thing.
So the whole thing’s being recorded and I go through the whole thing and anyone who’s able to come, comes. And obviously not everybody can come every single time. But whoever’s there comes, we explain the whole thing, we get excited, and I map out the vision on the white board, I explain things and then when I’m done I break down, “okay here’s the whole vision. I need so and so to do this part, so and so to do this,” and I explain all the different pieces. And then when it’s done, I stop the recording, upload it dropbox, post it in trello, here’s the vision and then here’s the, I take a picture of the whiteboard, here’s the whiteboard of the vision, here’s the video of the vision. And then I vox that out to everybody who may have missed the call. Here it is.
And then that happens and the person on our team who does the project management stuff, which right now is James and John, but eventually we’re going to be bringing in somebody full time to do this part, then goes and watches it second by second and basically builds out all the trello cards based on the vision. And then everyone’s got their stuff, trello cards, deadlines, everything. And it just all magically happens and it is the coolest thing in the world.
So we did it twice, two days ago and then yesterday. We’ve done two bat meetings. These aren’t like new aha moments, but it’s like new funnels we’re relaunching, so everyone’s got a little piece of this puzzle that I have in my head and we’re all working towards it, except for now everyone knows the whole vision.
And it’s insane, just the clarity, for me and I think everyone on the team has now, it’s just like, “Oh, that’s what Russell’s talking about.” Or people are like, I’m watching the office when I walk around, they’re rewatching the video like, “Oh, that’s what he’s talking about.” Or like, “In minute six of the video you said this, what did you mean again?” And then I can, it’s just really cool. It’s simplifying our process, I’m not repeating and re-teaching and re-explaining and re-showing things a million times.
Oh, and the other cool thing is after we got the whole thing done, then Jake on my team, he’s taking my whiteboard doodle and then he actually is going into Photoshop or illustrator or whatever he uses, and if you got the Funnel Hacker Cookbook, you know the little images of the pages and funnels, he’s actually building out a map for the funnel I sketched out in that , so we have a pdf of the actual map of what I doodled out, but it’s very specific. Like, “Here’s page one, page two, page three. Here’s the email sequence. Each sequence is here and goes to here.” We have an actual map we’re building off of as well, as opposed to some doodles I gave out.
Anyway, it’s just getting really, really cool so I’m excited. We’re systemizing the crap out of everything, we’re speeding up our processes, we’re making it so we remove me from a lot of the things I’ve been doing, just because they’re stuck in my head, and getting out into a spot where other people can help facilitate it. And it feels good, it feels freeing, it feels exciting.
So there’s an idea for those of you guys who are trying to figure this process out and trying to get the vision from your mind out to your team. Do a batman meeting like we’re doing. Send out a bat signal, bring them all to the bat cave, record your ideas, and then you’ve got it archived as everyone starts building and driving traffic and all those other pieces that come with it. That’s it, I’m excited.
Anyway, I heading in right now, I’m going to get some acupuncture, work on some funnels, I’m probably doing the batman meeting, we have four projects we’re trying to do by the end of the year. So I’m doing four bat meetings to catch everybody up, then we’ll have all our marching orders before the end of the year, then I’m heading to go see the new Star Wars. So excited. Alright guys, that’s all I got. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you guys soon, bye.
Late night coaching session with my son Dallin…
On today’s episode Russell teaches his son Dallin, and the listeners all about the concept of supply and demand. Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out how to use supply and demand to make more sales and more money.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. This is a special audio episode just for my audio friends. This will not be on video. I’m in the car right now driving to the grocery store with my son, Dallin. Dallin, how are you doing tonight?
Dallin: Tired.
Russell: He’s a little tired, it’s late. We forgot we have to have treats. He’s always tired though. He’s a growing boy. He asked me a question. I said, “Dallin, we’re going to answer this on the podcast.” So let’s queue in some music and we’ll come back and we’re going to share with you guys something very important for you to understand about supply and demand and Christmastime.
Alright everybody, welcome back. So Dallin came in the car and we were talking about headphone buds. Do you want to tell them what you told me, Dallin, when we were getting in the car about how much cheap headphones are versus these ones?
Dallin: So I was looking up how much the ear buds cost for apple, because I was looking at the iPhone 10.
Russell: He’s talking about the airpods that are super cool.
Dallin: And I looked up on Amazon, usually Amazon’s amazing, and it says it’s $850!
Russell: $850 for the Amazon headphones. He said, you can buy regular headphones for $5. And I pulled out those headphones out of my pocket, because I actually love those a lot. If you don’t have them you should get them.
I said, actually these sell for $100…
Dallin: Not from Amazon though.
Russell: Not from Amazon, and I’ll tell you why. I just explained this to Dallin. So I wanted to explain it to all of you guys, who I’m sure understand this but this sets up a teaching lesson I want to have here in a second.
So if you look at the pods, if you look at them they’re $150 on Apple’s site. But the problem is it takes two or three months to ship to you. So if you buy them and plan ahead it’s $150, but if you didn’t and it’s Christmastime and you’re like, “Ah, my wife, my girlfriend, my significant other, my kid, they need airpods, they’ve been asking all Christmas.” You try to buy it and you go to Apple and they’re like, “We’re not going to deliver til May.” And you’re like, “What, Christmas is in December.” And they’re freaking out. So they have to go look for other places, so they go on Amazon and they find people that had the foresight to know that people were gonna not have foresight. So they take their Apple Airpods that they bought for $150 and jack up the price for $800 on Amazon. And the people who are slow have to pay the difference.
So I was about to tell Dallin about Tickle Me Elmo, and then I said, “Wait a minute, we should share this story on the podcast.” So Dallin, here is the lesson of the story I want to tell you. And everyone can listen in on this.
So when I was a kid, it was right when Elmo came out. Sesame Street didn’t used to have Elmo. When Elmo came out, everyone, I remember being a kid and being like, “Elmo is the coolest.” He was just so much cooler than all the other muppets and we all loved him. And then one year for Christmas they came out with this, they called it Tickle Me Elmo. You guys have Elmo dolls now, but this was like the original Elmo one, where it’s a doll and you tickle it and it’ll giggle. And that was ground breaking 30 years ago.
Dallin: He’s scary.
Russell: He’s a little scary. So anyway, everyone wanted Tickle Me Elmo so the company that makes him, it’s the law of supply and demand. They made so many Tickle Me Elmo’s, and that was it, that was all they made. I don’t know the whole story behind it. But basically there was a lot more people that wanted them. Everyone’s kid wanted them, it was all over the news.
So Tickle Me Elmo started going, you’d normally buy them for like $20 and they got to $50 and $80 and people were auctioning them for tens of thousands of dollars for Tickle Me Elmo. And then other people heard about Tickle Me Elmo, and when they started talking about how there are none left. And then one of them sold on auction for $10,000. And people were freaking out, and people who already had them were like, “Well I can sell this and make some money.” So they would take the gifts away from their kids to make money by selling them to other people and it was just crazy.
Dallin: That would be sad.
Russell: Pandemonium. So the lesson that I want to teach you Dallin, and everyone who’s listening today, is the power of scarcity, supply and demand. So when you have a ton of stuff, like if there were a billion Tickle Me Elmo dolls, nobody cares and they’re not going to freak out and try to buy them. So the price goes lower. But when they’re high demand form and the supply is smaller, like the airpods, there’s a high demand for them, everyone wants them. But there’s only a few left, the people who sell them can charge way more for them because they need them.
So a lot of times in our businesses, depending on what we’re selling, a lot of times there’s not typically that built in supply and demand curve because we’re selling info products or supplements, or things that are kind of easy. But you can always do things in your marketing to create the illusion of supply and demand.
A good example is Bill Phillips, Muscle Media. When I was a kid it was the biggest supplement company in the world. In fact, some of my buddies now used to work for them, which is kind of fun. Anyway, Bill Phillips had Myloplex shakes and his whole EAS supplement line. He had unlimited stuff, he could sell as much as he wanted. But they needed to create urgency and scarcity to get people to buy it more, increase the price, all that kind of stuff. So there’s a marketing campaign that I believe Joe Polish was a part of or in charge of, Idon’t know. But I heard him tell the story one time, so somehow I know it’s credited back to him.
But what he did is they had two big shipments of supplements coming to their warehouse, two big semi trucks full. So they took a picture of it and they’re like, “We should do a marketing campaign around this.” So they sent a sales letter back to the entire Muscle Media Magazine list that basically said, “Hey, we over ordered. We’ve got two big semi trucks of supplements in the front. We need your help. Buy the excess stuff, that way we can get back to normal life.” So they sent the letter out and they sold a ton of supplents.
And then they’re like, “Well now we sold a bunch, so let’s decrease the supply, therefore increasing the demand.” So they took the exact same sales letter, and they took the picture of the two trucks and crossed out one of the trucks and said, “One down, one to go.” And then changed the letter to “one left, one left, one left.” Then they sent the same letter out to the same customer base. All it did was decreased the supply, therefore increasing the demand and they sold more from the second letter than they did from the first.
So that is what I wanted to share with you guys. Dallin already jumped out of the car, so maybe this is a lesson for you guys. Dallin, maybe when you are 25 working in a marketing company someday, you’re going to come back and listen to this podcast episode and hear the moral of the story, but until then we should go shopping for your treats.
Alright, that’s all I got guys. Anything to tell everyone who’s listening Dal?
Dallin: No.
Russell: Alright, you heard it here first. Alright guys, appreciate you and we’ll talk to you all again on the next episode of Marketing Secrets podcast. Bye everybody.
A few cool stories that will hopefully re-align what you define as what you actually earn.
On today’s episode Russell talks about doing what you said you were going to do instead of trying to lie, cheat, and trick your way into money. Here are some of the other insightful things Russell talks about in this episode:
So listen here to find out why integrity is more important than money.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Tonight we’re going to be hanging out and talking a little bit about the fact that nobody owes you anything and you should just be grateful for the opportunity.
Alright, I’m going to share with you guys some stuff tonight that I don’t normally share. Probably, I haven’t decided if I want to share normally or not. Anyway, I’m going to go into that here in a minute.
But I wanted to share one idea that’s completely not related to marketing, maybe it is. Who knows? Right now I am eating this, I don’t know if you can see this. If you guys are sitting here, I’m in my kitchen. This is my dinner. I share this because right now I’m on this, “How to get ripped before Funnel Hacking Live” diet with Bart Miller. It’s been funny, he’s got me working out, doing all sorts of stuff, but also had me eating a very specific way.
And I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to stick with it. In fact, the first day Dave and I, Dave’s doing it with me, we both went over to the grocery store and bought stuff and it was like $50 for that one day just to eat stuff. We just bought packs of chicken breasts and broccoli and it was horrible.
And the second day, I brought turkey from Thanksgiving, you know a little bit ago. And then Dave ran out of time to buy food, so he literally had his son go and buy him packs of deli meat. So he sits there all day eating packs of deli meat. And by day two we were like, we will never actually do this, because this is too hard to actually live this way. Which I’m sure is why a lot of people don’t lose weight and probably other things in your life you don’t do because it’s too hard to consistently do it.
So we went online and found someone here in Boise who cooks meals. So we gave her all the macros, micros, all that kind of stuff of what it needs to be and then everyday she literally makes us three meals, drops them off in the morning all perfectly cooked, fine tuned, healthy with exactly the carbs, macros, micros, fats, proteins, everything that is perfect to actually what it’s supposed to be.
So that’s what I’m eating now. This is my third meal today and it’s nice not to think and just grab it and eat. So I recommend it for any of you guys. And it’s not that expensive. We’re paying $300 a week for this, which if I was to go out one meal a week, that’s way more than three hundred bucks. This is three meals a day and plus it keeps me, all I’m allowed per mouth is what she puts into the boxes, that’s it. So just a thought. Find someone to cook your meals for you and do other things that are keeping you from getting the goals you want.
Alright, I digress. What I wanted to share with you guys today, or tonight, is pretty important I think. So it, I was going to share one thing, but there’s stories I can’t tell. So there’s been, honestly three or four situations in the last two weeks that have been insane. It’s been probably some of the hardest two weeks of my life, when it relates to the negative sides of business.
So for me, it’s been funny because I’ve been trying to block it and defend it because I need to keep moving forward and the negativity of stuff can keep me or you or anybody from moving forward. So I don’t want to share those specific stories, but the way that people dealt with them was really, I don’t think right. So I’m going to leave it at that. I’m not going to go deeper into it.
But what I do want to share, I want to share something that actually…I want to share this not to brag, that’s not the point, but to show I practice what I preach. I don’t just talk about this stuff, but I actually believe it, because I think that’s important. So that’s the only reason I’m sharing this story and hopefully it will help some of you guys to think about how you deal with stuff in the future. Hopefully it will help at least somebody out there.
Some of you guys know that a couple of years ago there was a company that got launched called Pruvit. And I was part of the original team that helped launch that and I was the dude who wrote the script for the animated video. I had my animators animate the whole thing and that became the campfire video for that company and in exchange for me doing that initial stuff we negotiated some equity in the company. The equity right now, looking at where the company’s blown up in the last three or four years, is worth insane amounts of money. Well over 8 figures, probably closer to…..well, it’s insanely a lot.
I negotiated that ahead of time, and then I was going to do a bunch of other things for the company, and just for some reason some of the things didn’t work because it was hard within the company. Network marketing companies software makes it hard to do some of the funnels and things I was planning on helping with. So that was kind of hard and then Clickfunnels was taking off at the same time, so I was focusing there.
When all was said and done at the end of the day, I didn’t do what I thought I was going. But what I did have was this really cool fancy thing called a contract that I had signed that said I owned x% of the company. The situation with the multiple people this week, it was not this same situation, it was something kind of like that. Where people didn’t pull their load and then they’re demanding this justice. It was unjust because they didn’t do anything.
It makes me so angry and frustrated. So I was thinking about that with myself and I was like, I’m in the same situation here. Based on what I negotiated three years ago, I own x% of this company. And while that’s awesome and it’s worth insane amounts of money, if I’m completely honest with myself, it is not fair. Not to me, it’s not fair to them. And if I was in their situation, I know in my mind that I would be annoyed by me all the time. The very thought of me, “Russell got this thing, and he did this little thing upfront and then we haven’t heard from him in the last three years, doing his own thing, running his own direction.”
And instead of being like, “Hahahaha, I got the contract, you owe me.” I actually actively reached out to them and said, “Hey, I don’t feel like I deserve this.” And Brian who is the owner of the company of course is like, “No, no you totally deserve it.” And I’m like, “I don’t and I’m okay with that. I thought I was going to be doing this, this and this for this movement and I didn’t. I wasn’t able to. Some things were because of technical things didn’t connect on the funnel side, some of it was because I didn’t have time. And I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. It’s not fair to you and I want someday when you sell this thing for you to be mad at me or angry at me when you have to give me this huge check because I didn’t deserve it, and I didn’t earn it and I don’t want it.”
He’s like, “Well this is kind of weird. What do you want?” and I was like, “For what I did, I think this is what would make sense.” And it’s literally like me giving back 8 figures worth of cash and just being like, “Here you go.” And taking something way less. Because that’s what I actually earned, and that’s what I deserve. I think he was kind of confused, then he said okay and now we’re making the transition, the shift away and I’m signing away my equity in exchange for something way less, because that’s what I actually earned, and what I actually deserve.
So that’s what I want you guys to start thinking about and doing. In a situation with a business partner or a friend or an employer, whatever it is, get what you actually deserve. Don’t get more. There’s this weird thing inside where people think they deserve everything. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane. I wouldn’t have believed some of these things if they didn’t happen to me over the last two weeks. But it’s insane what people feel like they deserve, even though they don’t deserve. Because of something, they feel like they….it’s so infuriating to me.
I remember I had a chance to hear this guy speak a little while ago name Nido Qubein, if you guys never heard of him, he is probably the best speaker I ever heard. I heard him probably seven or eight, longer, probably ten years ago now, at a Dan Kennedy event. And I think he’s like the CEO or something of Wonder Bread and a bunch of other things. He’s an entrepreneur and he actually came over to the country with like $20 in his pocket and built this huge empire. He’s an awesome dude.
In this speech, I’m totally going to slaughter because it’s a decade ago that I heard it, I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember the feeling I got and the message. But he talked about how he basically got a job as the, I don’t know what they call them in college, he was in charge of this college. The college had been struggling and he came in to turn it around.
And he came in the first week, he worked really hard for the first week and then when he came in they handed him a paycheck. He said, “What’s this for?” and they said, “This is your paycheck.” And he said, “Well, I haven’t done anything yet.” And they’re like, “Well, you get paid every two weeks, that’s how it works.” So they gave him the check and he sat at his desk and said, “I did not earn that.”
And he kept working and working. Two weeks later they came in to give him the next paycheck and he’s like, “What is this for?” and they’re like, “That’s your paycheck.” And he’s like, “I didn’t earn that.” He put it down. He kept trying to, his job, his role was to transform the university and he couldn’t do it, he kept trying and it took him a while because it’s a big thing to do. And eventually, I can’t remember, a year or two years later, whatever it was, he transformed this university and had this big impact.
At the time I guess somebody came in his office and he had this stack, five or six inches tall of these envelopes and somebody said, “What’s that big stack?” He said, “Those are the paychecks they keep giving me, but I haven’t earned them yet so I’m not going to…they’re not mine.”
I remember hearing that and just being like, that’s the right attitude. I don’t know, as opposed to the other situations, where you try to slip your way in and if you don’t get what you want you try to sue somebody. Or you try to get a contract signed, you try to sneak in, or you stop doing what you committed to do. Or whatever that thing is. It’s insane to me.
And like I said, it’s happened four times in the last six weeks. Dang. That people have done that. Where they feel like they deserve something, so they’re threatening to sue. Or they feel like they deserve something because they have a contract, they didn’t actually do what they committed to do, all these things. It’s just so frustrating to me. That’s not how I want to be remembered.
I want to be remembered as a person who actually got what I earned, and I showed up and did what I said I was going to do and if I didn’t do what I said I was going to do, I didn’t take what I contractually signed to because the contract said, because I know inside my heart that I broke the contract. I didn’t do what I said I was going to do.
I’m not someone who wants to come in and try to get what’s not mine through threats. It’s just ridiculous. I want to be the kind of person who someday I can tell my kids, I can tell my grandkids, hopefully someday a thousand years from now, someone’s going to watch this podcast. Someone in my posterity and be like, “Wow, great, great, great, great grandpa Brunson was a man of integrity. He actually did what he said he was going to do. When he didn’t earn something, he didn’t contractually trick somebody. ‘well, they got a contract so it kind of sucks.”
No, I freaking gave it back to them because I didn’t earn it. And I took what I did earn. I hope that rings true to some of you guys. If it does it will be worth the rant for tonight. So I hope it does. And if you haven’t heard Nido Qubein speak, I’m going to try to find…I bought a bunch of his stuff back in the day, I wonder if I could find that presentation where he talked about that. Because it was so impactful for me just to hear that and realize that’s how we should be working.
Just because the rest of the world shows up to work, falls asleep and gets a check every two weeks. Us, the people who are producers, who are moving forward, that’s not how we should look at things. We shouldn’t be okay with that when our team is doing that. We shouldn’t be okay when people around us are doing that. We need to earn what we earn and go out there and do the thing. That’s the goal.
And if you do work your butt off and you do, do the thing, you do earn the money. Be proud of it. Don’t hide and be embarrassed, you actually worked your butt off and you deserve it. But don’t do it the other way around. Where you trick, cheat, scam, lie, whatever it takes to get what you think is yours because it’s not yours. You don’t actually deserve it. You should just be grateful for the opportunity.
So that’s where I’m leaving this one. I’m grateful for the opportunity Pruvit gave me, excited……it’s funny, I should be so sick to my stomach about this, but I have no issues. I’m so excited to be giving back this equity in exchange for something that’s really cool, that’s a good fit. It’s good and I feel good about it, and I’m going to sleep really, really good tonight because of that. That’s what really matters.
So hopefully that helps somebody. Hopefully my great, great, great grandkids are watching this and they straighten up when you hear it, because it’s important. That’s what I got. Thanks guys for listening, appreciate you all. Have an amazing day, bye.
Some awesome advice from Bart Miller as we were doing our late night walk.
On this episode Russell talks with Bart Miller from his inner circle about immersing himself in the things he does instead of dabbling. Here are some of the cool things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen here to see why it’s so important to be an extremist when you set a goal to do something.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m walking right now with Bart Miller. How you doing, man?
Bart: I’m good, how are you guys?
Russell: Doing awesome. We’re going to show you guys some cool stuff here after the intro.
Alright, so we’re out here, it’s freezing cold out here.
Bart: It is cold.
Russell: Bart’s been in the inner circle now for a year and a half and I want to talk to you about him because he’s taught me some cool stuff, and I think it will help you guys as well. It makes it harder to walk and talk. It’s going to throw the whole thing….
Bart: Another level here going on, I love it.
Russell: So I’m going to embarrass Bart, because he doesn’t even know what I’m going to ask, I just turned the camera on. First off, for background for those who don’t know, he runs a couple of businesses. What are the core things you usually run?
Bart: So we have an Amazon business, we have a makeup school and Russell tries to keep me as focused as possible on those two things. So we’ll just say those.
Russell: As he does everything else. The other ones he refuses to tell me about because I will tease him forever.
So this is what I want to talk about. We hung out, when was it we went to Dallas?
Bart: That’s been a year ago.
Russell: So a year ago we went down there because we working on the beauty school and we filmed an episode of Funnel Hacker TV, which actually is the next episode, I don’t know if you knew that.
Bart: I didn’t know that. Cool.
Russell: The end of the last one said, “Up next week,” and it had that thing with Collette.
Bart: How did I miss that, I watched it.
Russell: It was after the credits. Anyway, next episode is going to be showing that whole story. It shows me wearing skinny jeans and bunch of other things.
Bart: Which was amazing, by the way.
Russell: Oh skinny jeans. Anyway, so what I think was interesting and why I love Bart so much, why I just wrote him a big huge check to come kick my butt is because after that, you’ve always been into fashion but that wasn’t your thing. We talked about it, “Okay, Bart you should be doing fashion for people.” And then he got intense and obsessed in it and just was awesome. And he basically at the last Funnel Hacking Live, dressed me, dressed half the inner circle and a bunch of other people.
Then fast forward 7 or 8 months, since Funnel Hacking Live, when was it you decided you were going to get ripped and shredded and everything?
Bart: So my son was leaving on an LDS mission, and I’ve been racing bikes for the last 7 years and I just always wanted fitness, because a lot of people think it’s easy to be fit all the time. And I’m here to tell you, and don’t tell my family this, but my mom’s obese, my sister’s obese, my dad’s obese, I know it runs in my family. I’m probably taking way too long here, but what I’m saying is, my son, I wanted to spend time with him before he was leaving and getting out of the house.
That was a year ago, so I decided I was going to start lifting, and then Russell’s going to tell you I’m afraid, that I’m an extremist.
Russell: Which is actually the moral of the story, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Bart: So I get super extreme into things. And that’s why I hired Russell really, for inner circle to be honest with you. We’ll get into that, but anyway, I couldn’t take it anymore and I went after the best coach in the world in my space, which is physique and body building and I hired him. So I fly to California every month for a full week and I lift with him, then I fly home, implement it all and then I fly back and do more. I did my first show in California with him, did my second show in Boise. At the first show I won an overall, and 40+ category and took second in the 35+ category. So I was super, super stoked, blessed, but put all the hard work into motion, made it happen.
Russell: Awesome. Okay the battery is about to die, I’m going to grab my phone and finish this because I still haven’t got to the point of what I want to share with you guys. Alright we’ll be right back.
Alright the battery died, but now we got it back. So you missed our walk, it was really fun.
Bart: It was amazing.
Russell: Went four miles, it was awesome. So I don’t remember exactly where we left off, but it was somewhere between why I respect Bart and why you guys should listen to what he’s going to say right now. So my question, not my question, but my observation, I would love to get your thoughts on it, is just….the battery is going to die again now. We may go back to the phone in a second here.
But it’s basically, when you go into something, you don’t dabble. Some people in life, they dabble, “I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this, or do this.” You’re like, “I’m going to get fit. I can’t remember if you talked about this or not, but you went and hired a weight lifting coach who lives in a different state, you fly out there one week a month, work out with him, come back, and then you sign up for body building competitions, all sorts of stuff. It wasn’t just like, “Oh I’m going to get in shape.” And then you do it for two or three days and then you quit like most people do, including this guy right here sometimes. You went insanely all in.
I just think that that is cool and people should learn from that.
Bart: Thanks, so one thing I’ll just tell you. The camera’s on and I’m a talker, Russell knows it.
Russell: That one died as well. We’re back again, we’re on the new phone now.
Bart: So you guys get the honor and the privilege to see Tony at his event coming up, which is why we’re getting fit. But on that note, I learned this from Tony Robins, he said, “If the pain doesn’t outweigh the pleasure, you’ll never be successful.” At the time I was like, are you kidding me? And I really didn’t understand it.
And then he made it really clear. He said, “If you want to quit smoking, or you want anything in life, that if you’ll make something so painful, that you have to get there. Like you have to accomplish it.” For example, if I wrote a check for a half a million dollars, let’s say I was super wealthy like Russell. I wrote a check for an enormous amount of money to a charity that I absolutely detested, and if I failed at that, then XYZ could cash that check. That pain would outweigh me ever getting there.
So the pain of me getting on stage and not looking my very best was enough to, I would give up anything. I never cheated on my diet or anything one time because I knew that if I failed, I couldn’t live with myself.
Russell: You’d be embarrassed in a Speedo on stage.
Bart: Totally. Well, not in a Speedo.
Russell: And actually, by the way, when I started this process, he was like, “What is the thing that’s going to cause you the most pain?” I was like, “Honestly if I ever had to get on stage in a Speedo with a black tan, that would be the worst.” So if I don’t hit my goals, you guys will see me on stage.
Bart: You’ll see Russell doing an event. And that’s the thing, if I could you any advice, it’s the same advice Tony did. So when I commit to something, I always tie it to “what’s the consequence”. And I shouldn’t be teaching this to Russell because now he’s going to do this crap to me. This is a horrible podcast. Don’t listen to this again.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, you’ve got to put something there that helps you not just get there, but you’re going to make it because if you don’t this consequence is extreme for you. If you say you’re going to have a funnel every week and you don’t accomplish that, you need to have something so serious that there’s just no way you’re going to fail doing that. And that’s what I’ve learned in my life to push me to that next level, and that’s why I did it.
Russell: That’s awesome. So I’ve seen Bart do it twice in two different things right now, and it’s super inspiring. In fact, it was like a year ago, when you came and worked out at my place the first time with Anthony here. You were just kind of doing some stuff. Then here today he was kind of taking the show, “Hey Russell, do this, do this.” I was like, dang. This is a different Bart in less than a year, which is insanely cool. But it’s because you go all in and you don’t dabble. It’s awesome.
Bart: It’s like you said, immerge in yourself. It’s the same thing you teach, you don’t have to be only a few steps ahead of everybody else to be successful, but if you total immerse, it’s the same thing that Tony Robins preaches, and you’re the best at it. Russell commits to things he should never commit to. I mean it serious. Have you seen his life?
Russell: My wife’s like, “Why are you doing this?”
Bart: Yeah, but it’s the same thing I’m doing. He puts himself through so much pain that if he doesn’t get it done, he knows he’ll never accomplish it if he doesn’t do it. Just like taking this challenge right now. He does not have time to get ripped for Funnel Hacking Live, let’s be clear. But we’re out here at 10 o’clock at night. How many other people are sitting doing something else? And while we’re doing it, we’re creating a podcast. He utilizes time like crazy, it’s insane. But he does the exact same thing that he’s complimenting me for, but it’s the same model he runs every single day of his life. So learn from that and you’ll be super successful.
Russell: There you go guys, you heard it here first. So thanks Bart for hanging out man, and for the walk and the workout, and for, I got a sweat belt on, this is sucking all the fat out of me. Dude, I’m going to be so ripped, it’s going to be amazing. And if not, you’ll see me in a Speedo, which would be the worst thing ever. Let’s all pray that I stick to my goals.
Bart: Hey everybody, send him really clean food, nothing for the holidays, be nice.
Russell: No junk food. This guy’s going to be gone my FHL. Anyway, if you don’t have your tickets yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com. Bart, you’re going to be there, hanging out for the party.
Bart: Hanging out for sure.
Russell: So when you’re there, grab him and pay him to help get you dressed nice and get you fit, it’ll be awesome. Anyway guys, appreciate you all. Thank you man, for hanging out. See you guys later.
Bart: Bye
Be a fly on the wall during the ClickFunnels partner meeting and hear the #1 thing each of us learned on our journey so far.
On this episode we get to hear from the entire Clickfunnels partnership team. They all share the big takeaways they have received as they have watched the company soar to over a hundred million dollars a year in revenue. Here are some of the cool things you will hear.
So listen here to find out what the Clickfunnels partnership team members have learned that have lead the company to surpass their goal of a hundred million dollars in revenue a year.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today is a special episode, we’re here above the ice right here, there’s hockey happening down there. But we’re in our partner planning meeting, here are all the cofounding partners of Clickfunnels, hanging out and plotting world domination. The theme of today’s event and the theme of this podcast is this:
It comes from social network, millions of dollars isn’t cool. You know what is cool? A billion dollars.
Alright everybody, so welcome back. We’re excited to have you guys here. We’ve been here locked up in this awesome office for the last day and a half planning world domination and how to make Clickfunnels better for you as a user, how to get more of you as users, so we can serve more people, more audiences and more entrepreneurs. It’s been really, really fun. We’ve been going around plotting and scheming and planning and creating and doing and a whole bunch of really fun stuff.
So I thought we’d take a quick ten minute break here and I thought it’d be fun because we actually had a call yesterday with, I guess they’re not really competitors, a cool company that we like what they do. We’re potentially interesting in maybe buying them or whatever.
It’s funny because they’ve been watching what we’re doing, obviously and he’s like, “You guys are what, 10 million dollars a year in revenue?” and we’re like,
“No.” So in case you guys are wondering, we passed $10 million in revenue year one. We’re year three.
So I thought it would be kind of fun to maybe look at this, a little bit ago, like 2 months ago we passed a hundred million in revenue. So we went from zero to a hundred million dollars in about 3 years. And I wanted to say what was the biggest aha that each of us individually got, that we’ve learned in that process. So you guys get ideas from everybody inside the team here. So just a really quick intro with everybody, then I’ll share my aha and then move on.
So I’m Russell, I’m the nerd who is the dancing monkey who’s talking about Clickfunnels all day long. That’s what I do here. This is Todd Dickerson, he is the genius that built all of the original Clickfunnels and look at that beard, so manly. Over here, this is Dave, he’s all the business development stuff, he’s got the retro Clickfunnels shirt on. Then over here is John, he does all of our ads, and if you see us every day on every platform it’s because of that guy, so blame him. Over here we have Brent Coppieters, he does all our operations stuff and he’s going to be transitioning to a bunch of our new, something we can’t talk about live or publically yet. It’s going to be cool. And this is Ryan, what’s up Ryan. Ryan is the genius who is always coding.
So I thought it would be fun to give you different people’s perspective, because obviously we’re all in different parts of the company, lifting different parts, doing different things, so I thought it’d be interesting to hear everybody’s ideas. So I’ll start with mine.
So I think the biggest takeaway, I shared this last night with these guys, is as I was growing my business initially, the first 8 or 9 years I was very, I don’t know what the right word is, scarcity mindset or whatever. Where it’s like, I am Russell. I am the leader. I own the company, and all these things. And I think I had one or two deals with partners that went sour because I was like, I will never have a partner, I will only be me.
It’s funny, with that mindset and that attitude, we were able to get to this level and we kind of camped out there. And I’m lucky for me, Todd came in. Trojan horsed his way in, where he basically worked for free for an entire year, which was awesome. And then we worked together for a couple of years. I don’t even know how many years it was ahead of time, a couple of years before that, and then we had the idea for Clickfunnels. We were sitting in an office in Boise, we bought the domain, we were going to call it something different and then we finally found Clickfunnels, we bought the domain, then for a whole week we were mapping out on the whiteboard everything.
At the end of the week, and this is to kind of take you back, this is on the backend, we had 100 employees, the whole thing collapsed, we had to fire 80 people. I had to go from a 20 thousand square foot building to a 2 thousand and we could barely afford the rent. It was the most humbling, painful time of my life. I think that the Lord or whoever, whatever you want to call it, humbled me to a spot where I was willing to say yes to this. And I am so eternally grateful that I did.
But at the end of that week Todd was like, “Okay, I’m going to go back to Atlanta. I’m going to build this thing, the Clickfunnels thing. But I don’t want to do it as an employee, I want to do it as a partner.” And the Russell two or three years earlier than that would have been like, “Um nope. This is the Russell show.” And I would have done something stupid like that. But luckily I was at a point where I was sufficiently humble. I was like, you know what I’m going to do that.
And I’m so grateful that I did because then Todd built Clickfunnels. Holy crap, seriously. It’s insane. And then after that, that’s when we brought in these other guys as partners as well. They’re all rockstar people. It wasn’t just like, “I’m going to give you a base salary.” Or whatever. It was like, “Okay, come in and become a partner in this thing.” For me it’s like, as you find the right people and incentivize them….If I were to ever build a company again, I would never build a company where Russell’s the thing.
We went and watched Justice League last night, so maybe this is because it’s in my head. Justice League, Avengers, Batman, whatever. I would literally, if I ever build a company again, the initial thought will be, I’m going to build my Avengers team, my Justice League. I’m Batman, there’s Iron Man, everyone’s got their spot. Ryan’s Wonder Woman, I just want to look like Aqua Man, that dude is ripped.
But if I ever start a company again, the first thought will not be, what product should I sell? It will be what team should we assemble? And then I would carve out where everyone’s roles were going to be. I’m not going to be CEO next time, so any of you guys can pick that, I’m done after this.
But we each pick our different roles and then from there, collectively, be like, “What should we create? What should we build? Who should we serve?” And then we’d go from that. So my biggest takeaway from going from zero to a hundred million dollars is definitely give up control, build your Avenger team ahead of time, because Russell Brunson could have never gotten here. It took these guys and the team we built to create that.
Anyway, there’s my number one. So I’m handing it off to Todd now to share the biggest thing he’s learned from going from zero to a hundred million dollars.
Todd: What’s funny is that I was actually thinking about saying very similar things. One of the biggest things is the team. Seeing how to build a team around you and actually do things as a team as opposed to by yourself independently. That’s how I’ve always done things in the past, on my own more or less, same type of scenario.
But I think something else that stands out to me is having someone who is obsessive about the product itself. We always talk about how marketing is the big thing, and it is. But if you’re focused on the marketing, you still need someone on your team that is obsessed with the actual product. Making sure you’re delivering the best possible thing to people. So when you sell it to them, they actually like it and they come back and want more. So that’s my other big epiphany I think that I’ve had over the past…
Russell: Especially in our world. Our world, everybody’s obsessed with marketing, rightfully so. A lot of times if you’re in the marketing and product, if you do them both, it’s really, really hard. I tried to build software companies in the past where I was like the marketing guy, plus trying to convince the developers how to do it. Whereas with this, you were able to run with the product and I could just sell.
Todd: Absolutely. That’s why I think that’s worked as a great partnership. Russell focuses on the marketing and I focus on the product. And I think having that really makes a difference. Pass it on to Dave here.
Dave: Hey there. So we talk about this all the time and I cannot express the importance of it, and that’s the Dream 100. So I took a look back on everything that’s happened as far as first of all having an amazing product and then amazing leaders, and then Todd and Russell, the two of them are amazing together. I think the part for me, is I look at everything we’ve built over the last three years now, is the importance of the Dream 100.
Originally Dream 100, as far as affiliates, and even most recently when we did the book launch, what I really learned a lot from that was the importance of understanding it’s a Dream 100 per platform as well. So as far as your influencers, where are they at? Are they on YouTube, are they on Facebook, are they on Twitter, or are they in Instagram? Wherever they might be.
And then as recently, as far as, a new Dream 100, as far as hiring partners that you really want to end up working with long term. So for me, I think the most important thing is when you start looking at building something, is really identifying your Dream 100 and then being very, very consistent in continuing to mail out every single month to them. Establishes and builds that relationship with them, they get used to seeing you.
It’s been fascinating as we’ve gone out and traveled and go to these different places and people remember the boxes and things that have been sent. And they’re like, “Oh, how do I get on that list?” And if they’re asking to be on the list, I don’t need them on the list, I don’t need them basically. But the reality basically says that it actually works. So I would say, in building a hundred million dollar company, and any size company I would definitely say Dream 100 is one of the most important things. John, up to you.
John: Alright, so a really interesting journey we’ve been on. It’s been so much fun. One of the things that I’ve learned which is just huge, is prioritizing your time and your tasks. I mean, especially when we’re all internet entrepreneurs, we’re on the computer, it’s so easy. The computer is a gateway to anything. So a huge thing for me is to, before even opening the computer, physically write down or use your phone or use something else that’s not your computer, to structure out. We all do this, Russell does this, I do this. We structure out what we’re going to do.What are the next things I need to do?
Because if you can get that basically spiritually created, if you can get that thought through before you actually begin, then it changes everything. Then you’re actually getting through stuff instead of just fumbling along. It’s so easy because we’re all bombarded with a million different things, we could be paying attention to a million different things. Only some of which are really going to move the needle.
And the other thing is, especially as you grow your team, as you get more people working with you, it’s about….So I build out that list and then the next thing I ask myself as I go through that list is, “Okay, who can do this? Who can I get to do this? Who can I get to do this?” And that specific question, as I go through the list, as who can I get to do this, that allows me to go through and delegate as much as possible to team members, so then I become more of a leader. Because it’s so easy to just be like, I could just do it all. Yeah, you can probably. But maybe you shouldn’t be doing it all. You know, that’s something to think through.
So build out that list, really think through it before you start to take action in the day, prioritize it and then go through and glean through the list and be like, “Who can get to do these things.” Assuming you’ll be doing none of them. Of course there will be a handful that you end up doing, but that way it’s just a mindset that will help you get things delegated properly. Here you go Brent.
Brent: Awesome. Hey everybody, it’s good to connect with you. I just want to express how much we appreciate you. Everybody who follows us, who’s obviously dedicated listeners of Russell’s program. It’s funny, more and more as we travel with Russell, even locally here in the Boise area, he’s getting like, people recognize him all over the place. They see the jeep, or they see him in the hallway of the hotel and they’re like, “Hey, I’m your neighbor.” Just these random……Albertsons…..it’s just funny.
Anyway, a couple of things. I’ve had the privilege of working with Russell for over 11 years and the one thing I think that you just cannot replace, or that’s absolutely needed is hard work. You have to be dedicated in getting this business and be willing to sacrifice what you need to sacrifice to get going. Another thing that I think we’ve learned through this journey is stay nimble and small as much as you can. Don’t go out and try to lease some big office space until you’ve got sales coming in, consistent sales, your business is in good shape that way.
Another thing that we’ve kind of followed here in our company is we’ve been slow to hire and quick to fire. Building a team, and Russell’s done a tremendous job of this, obviously we’ve got great partners here. And then that has extended to our team members. Again, we love all our team members. We are essentially a great family of likeminded individuals who are focused on a goal. And the leadership in this company has helped us all work to achieve that goal. So that’s been awesome as well.
So stay small as long as you can, be nimble, be humble, but you gotta work hard. Once you do those things, don’t sweat over the small things. We’ve had different variations of an employee handbook, and I’m just finally getting it out here in the next few weeks. And we’ve been in business three years. So don’t stress about the mistakes. We were somewhere, we were at an event in Denver a few weeks ago, it was related to customer support, and that’s very normal. For small startups, that’s very normal. Those things just come, but don’t worry about those little details. They work themselves out. But work hard and you’ll achieve that success. So I will hand this over to my buddy, Ryan.
Ryan: So I love talking about this topic, and I think it’s best summarized as, “Worse is better.” You can do a lot more than you think. Gary V told us that when we met with him on the social media side. We’re like, “We already do everything, we already do a ton, we’re on everything.” He’s like, “You can do more.” And I think this is true on everything we do in engineering, everything we do when it comes to product. You’ve heard it in every single answer from everybody to some degree.
But I think the killer, underlining subtext to all that, is that constraints are not a limiting factor. They force you to focus, the focus forces you to prioritize, that forces you to do the one thing everyday that’s most valuable so that you can compete with somebody who’s got 40 million dollars in funding and you’ve got three guys in an office trying to figure it out because it makes you laser focus on the thing you have to do every single day.
That’s what enables you to compete at a higher level, that’s what enables, and I believe the most important thing we’ve done in our culture is force everybody, from hiring decisions, to business processes, don’t worry about the handbook, don’t over complicate this, simplify this. Because those constraints are what make us as powerful as we are and what enable to be a hundred million dollar company with a hundred people.
To grow to a billion dollars with fewer resources and a fraction of the budget and everything else. Everyone else who’s competing with us, they have no idea how we do it. They’re all like, “Wait, how many engineers do you have? How do you do this? How big are you?” it blows their mind and I think that’s the thing they miss. Those constraints are what enable us to do it. Our weaknesses are our strengths and people see them backwards. And we see it the opposite. That’s why everyone’s so blown away and why nobody gets it. I think that’s our secret sauce in many ways. So I love that. That’s our thing. That’s what I learned, that blew my mind.
Russell: That’s awesome. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Its fun hanging out and we just want to thank you guys so much for allowing us to serve you and serve your audience. We love what we do. We’re obsessed, we’re passionate, we’ve been up for the last two days going crazy trying to figure out ways to do it better. You know, for us, a lot of people say, “You guys made it to a hundred million. That’s crazy.” That’s step number one for us. We’re just getting started, wait until you see what’s going to be coming out over the next twelve months and beyond. We love you guys, we appreciate you, we’re so grateful for the ability and the right and the gift we have to be able serve you guys in what you guys do. So thanks again so much for everything and we’ll talk to you guys soon, bye everybody.
Interesting thoughts after my whirlwind week.
On this episode Russell talks about what’s it’s like being an introvert in an extrovert’s business. He shares how you can still be successful while being introverted, just like him. Here are some interesting things in this episode:
So listen here to find out how an introvert is making it in this extroverted business.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about what it’s like being an introvert inside of an extrovert’s calling. Here we go.
Alright so last week was a little bit insane. I think I only slept about 2 ½ hours last night and I am really excited to fall asleep. The kids are almost all in bed, but one of them is finishing their homework so I’m like, I’m going to sneak away and talk to you guys before I pass out and then go back and finish the homework with them so. That’s why we’re here right now.
So last week there was an event that I wanted to speak at for a long time and I got invited probably about six or seven months ago. I was looking forward to it and then after someone else….I get invited to speak at a lot of events, and unfortunately I have to say no to most of them just because it’s hard to leave and travel and be away from family, so it’s not typically worth the investment or the time away, especially this level in the business. It’s tough because it’s like, I’ve had people come back like, “Hey we’ll pay you $100,000 to come speak.” And I’m like, I feel like a jerk because to be able to travel there, being there, being able to travel back, it’s like, I could do a webinar and clear way more than that, you know what I mean, and be able to go sleep in my own bed at night and be with my kids that night.
So it’s just tough unfortunately. But someone asked me, one of my friends, James Malinchak asked me and since I was already going to be speaking at WarriorCon, which is widespread event that I was super excited to speak at. James is in the same city. So it was like, “Sweet dude. I’ll just drive over and we’ll do this whole thing.” So we’re at the event and I’m like, I’m going to be in LA, what else is in LA? Tai Lopez is in LA, we should go hang out with Tai. Justin and Tara Williams are in LA, we should hang out with them. And it turned out to be really, really cool.
Here comes Bow-dog, who has been working on his homework. Say hi to everybody.
Bowen: Hey!
Russell: Anyway, the vacation was crazy. Basically what happened is Dave and I jumped in a plane and flew out there to LA, and at night we got to the Warrior Event, so we decided to sneak in. We were at the back and we had white shirts on and everyone of the warriors got black shirts on that say “Warrior” on it. I wasn’t speaking until the next day, but I walk in and they came and grabbed the shirts and like, “Go put these on right now.” So we put our shirts on so we could fit in with the whole cult-ture that their building over there.
It was just cool. And then that night I was going to work on slides, I was super tired so I just went to bed. Woke up in the morning and I was going to work on slides, and I was super tired so I didn’t and we went and got massages, don’t tell mom. Massages were really good. Then after the massages I was going to work on the slides, but then I didn’t. And then Justin and Tara came to lunch, we hung out with them for lunch, which was awesome. Then it was like, the ninth hour, or twelfth hour, however that works.
So I had to go get the slides done. So I went up into the room, got my slides done, saw Kevin Anderson who does all our Funnel Hacker TV stuff, he came to come film. And Brandon Fischer was there as well, he does all of other video stuff. So it was kind of cool to have those guys come out as well. They were filming the room, walking around, getting a bunch of footage and everything, which is pretty sweet. So you’ll probably see some of this on Funnel Hacker TV soon.
But that’s kind of what’s happening. It’s so cool, Warrior was insane. 600 men, just insane, everyone dressed in black, it was really, really cool. I was teaching a lot of the Expert Secrets book stuff, but as I was teaching it to them I was also showing how Garret had done it. The process Garret had done to create the Warrior movement, it was really kind of cool to be like, “Here’s this piece of it, here’s how I did it. Here’s what Garret’s doing, here’s what you need to do.” And kind of go through the whole thing. So I think everyone thought it was pretty cool.
The only problem, it’s so bad. I started the presentation and then I come up and Garret does this huge thing to get everyone pumped up and excited and I come on stage and start my slides and my slides aren’t working. And it’s like, I had done all this research to find out, the day we launched Clickfunnels, it was like 138 days later that he had launched his and it had the dates and time and all this stuff in the first slides. So it wasn’t like I could just BS my way through the first three or four slides. They had like pictures and the date and time. I’m like, “Ugh. Well….”
So it was super anticlimactic for probably, seemed like an hour, but probably the first 2 or 3 minutes. And then they came back, you know you get kind of thrown off. It took me 5 or 6 minutes to get back on and then I think the rest of the presentation went pretty well after that.
That was awesome and then we got done and we were supposed to leave to head to Tai Lopez’s house, which is like a 2 hour drive I think, but also Stu McClarin was doing a charity event…..this is homework, we’ll talk about that in a minute. We’re almost done bud, then you can…..
So Stu McClarin is doing an online charity event, so I was supposed to do an interview for that, so I jumped on at the hotel before we left. And of course the hotel internet goes out. It keeps going in and out, so it’s all…..but we did our best there and ended up raising like $22,000 I think for that charity event, which was really sweet to help some families out that have been struggling with hurricane stuff.
Then jumped in an Uber, drove to Tai Lopez’s house, they asked us when we got there, “What’s your hard leave time?” “We have to leave at 11:00 sharp.” So we ended up being there until after 1, almost 1:30 I think. We filmed to info products there, ate dinner with Tai and then did an interview with him, which if you haven’t seen yet, it’s online. It ended up being almost 2 hours long, it was really good. I’m going to see if I can get it on the podcast, so I may play here for you guys to hear. It turned out really cool. If I do that I will explain some of the reason behind the podcast.
But we got done with that at like 1 in the morning. Jumped in an Uber and got to the new hotel somewhere else by 2. And then passed out and woke up at like 6 because I still had to do slides for the next day’s event. So I was working on slides all day. Then got down, get onstage at James event, closed 30% of the room on our package, did the whole thing and by the time we left, we were driving to the airport and I’m like, I just can’t keep my eyes open, I’m so tired.
We drive to the airport, fly home and it’s interesting, because in those situations, I’m onstage, 100’s of people, everyone’s cheering, I love that. That’s me, as Russell the extrovert. I love that. My calling in life and in business is like, requires me to do that, be good at that. Because I gotta stand onstage in front of all of these people and entertain and inspire and hopefully give them the tools they need to be able to move forward.
But what a lot of people don’t know is that’s not natural to me. I’m not naturally very extroverted. In fact, my whole entire life up until probably 10 years ago, when I kind of started into this business, it wasn’t even when I started this business, it was way into the business before I realized I had to start learning how to speak, talk. But I was super introverted, in fact, still am very, very introverted. But when I’m in those situations, I’m at an event and I’m onstage, it comes out of me. I love it, I really, really enjoy it but it’s funny because Dave, who’s there at all these events, he told me, “You’re onstage, you’re present, doing your thing, loving it. Then you get off stage and someone comes and asks you a question and you just shrink in this weird introverted, like you can tell I’m not comfortable in that kind of situation.”
At James Malinchak’s event, it’s funny because I haven’t spoken at an event like that, where you speak and sell and people can ask you questions afterwards for a long time. And it was just tough because I’m in the back of the room and probably for an hour and a half I had people ask me question after question after question. Which is just like, super uncomfortable for me typically. And introverted Russell was really, really struggling.
And then it’s funny, I got home, we took an Uber home, flew home, got back to my house about midnight and the next morning at like 8:00 we had this big church Christmas party that my wife was in charge of. Such a crazy week. So we get there and there’s you know, all the entire church, all these people, and all this stuff, and I’m there with the kids because she was stuff ready. So I bring the kids in and it was just interesting. I come in and totally introverted Russell took over. Not comfortable in that situation.
I kind of sat down at the table with my kids and there’s all these amazing people who go to church with us, that I know who they are, I like them, I like them a lot. There’s especially a bunch of guys that I really think are just awesome. And it’s so weird how much fear I have to go and just say hi to them. I hate it. That’s one thing that really frustrates me about myself. In my element, it’s easy to go out there and people come to me, because it’s the brand I built. I go to events and people come and they want to ask me questions, so it’s really easy. It just very naturally comes to me and I can talk to them.
But I go to these other places where no one really knows who I am, and it’s just, I’m a person. It’s hard. I don’t know why I struggle so much to just walk up and say to them and talk to them. It’s interesting how much that introvert side of me, how much I struggle with that.
I remember sitting there the whole Christmas party, looking around and seeing all these amazing people, people that are fascinated by us, “I want to go talk to that person, I want to ask them a question, or do whatever.” But I honestly have so much fear inside of me, it drives me nuts. All this fear keeps me from going and saying hi, just going and talking to them. And even when they do come say hi to me or whatever, it’s just weird.
I’m really good at carrying on a conversation when people come and ask me questions, you know, but it’s like, we’re on mutual ground, they don’t really know much about me or whatever, I really struggle. I always try to think, I need to be interesting and ask them questions about themselves, but I’m just not as good at that. It’s just fascinating, the contrast of the night before I was onstage in front of all these people, people chanting my name and screaming and going crazy, people crying and this whole thing.
And then the next day I’m around people that live near me and I can’t even…it’s interesting. So that’s a little glimpse of what it looks like to be an introvert in an extrovert position or calling. So unless you think that I got everything put together, I still get scared to death. One of my biggest fears in life is calling people. I hate calling people on the phone, it scares me to death. That’s why I use Voxer with my inner circle members, that’s why I never, the only phone call I ever answer is from my wife. Everyone else I make go to voicemail, then I listen to the voicemail and if it sounds awesome I call them back, otherwise I just don’t call them back at all. I’ll text them back or I’ll vox them back. Just because I have these weird fears about that.
Anyway, it’s not just me, it’s everyone. So don’t feel bad if you are like, “I’m too introverted I’m never going to be good at this business. I don’t dare talk to people.” I get that. Still to this day, I get so nervous behind it. But that’s one of the powers and beautiful things about this kind of business. My thoughts are like, when you are introverted it’s really hard to do face to face, one on one selling. Nothing scares me more than that.
It’s funny how we built huge call centers and stuff like that and I don’t think I’ve ever picked up the phone and called someone and sold them on the phone. I don’t think I would even have the guts to do that yet. I can stand in front of a room of a thousand people or five thousand people and sell.
For example, I’m speaking at Grand Cardone’s event in February and there’s supposed to be somewhere between 8500 and 10,000 people. I’m so excited for that. The extrovert in me is like, yes, this is going to be awesome, I’ll step onstage, I’ll speak, I’ll sell. It’ll be so much fun. And then afterwards in the hallway, anyone asks me questions I get all awkward and weird. Hopefully someday I figure it out.
So hopefully my kids, hopefully Bowen over here, will never be nervous. Do you get nervous from talking to people at all?
Bowen: Yeah.
Russell: Do you get nervous standing in front of a lot of people and talking?
Bowen: Yeah.
Russell: Both of them?
Bowen: I’m about to do it in front of my entire class.
Russell: You’re giving a presentation tomorrow?
Bowen: Wednesday.
Russell: On Wednesday? Does it make you nervous?
Bowen: Yeah.
Russell: What makes you more nervous, talking in front of a class of a whole bunch of people, or just talking one on one with somebody?
Bowen: Probably the whole class.
Russell: The whole class does? Interesting. See for me, I was just telling them, when I’m onstage with a whole bunch of people I feel comfortable, but then one on one I get really nervous.
Bowen: if it’s one on one I guess you do kind of get nervous. I mean, it was kind of hard for me to do this because one on one is kind of hard because if you mess up they’ll recognize it. Except if it’s a lot of people, they don’t yell it out.
Russell: Anyway, I just wanted to share with you guys tonight, I don’t think this is something anyone is going to learn much from, other than hopefully give the introverts out there some hope that they can do this.
And people that are extroverted, help them understand their super powers. A lot of those guys are going to be a lot better one on one and a lot of introverts just seem like….it’s funny, because it’s not just me either. I was talking to Frank Kern and he’s like, “I love doing big events, but it scares me to talk to people afterward.” He’s super introverted. I think a lot of people in these kinds of positions are.
So it’s neat because it’s something that introverts can thrive in, in mass situation, but then they’re…even within there they can still have success. Hopefully that helps some of you guys who may get nervous or may think, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this. I’m not like Russell.” I get people all the time, “I’m not like you Russell. I can’t stand up in front of people and just talk for hours.” I’m like, “Dude, but you can talk to someone face to face, I can’t do that. It scares the crap out of me.” I mean, that’s a bad word here, in this family. It scares the..something else out of me. That’s the worse swear word you’re going to hear from Russell.
Bowen: Crud maybe.
Russell: Crud? It scares the crud out of me. Yeah, that’s way better. Good job. Anyway, I hope that helps those introverts out here to understand how it is that you can still succeed in an extroverts world. In doing this stuff, the Expert Secrets stuff, putting your voice out there, putting your message out there. Because when all is said and done, the only thing that really matters is the impact you have on people’s lives.
So do it, it’s worth it. At first you’re not going to be very good, but if you get consistent with it, you get better and better and better. I think I told you guys, Steven Larsen told me, because I started this podcast back before I knew how to see if anybody was listening to it, so I think for four or five years I didn’t have it hooked to any stat system. And I’m glad I didn’t know because I just kept doing it and doing it. And Steven Larsen said to me one time, “Yeah, the first 45-46 episodes weren’t very good. After that it started getting really, really good though.”
But that’s how it kind of works. It’s all about you guys getting out there and sharing, sharing, and sharing and eventually you’ll get comfortable with your voice. I just watched Alex Charfin, he launched his Momentum podcast after the Pirates Cove mastermind this year, and he’s passed like 80 thousand downloads, which is awesome. And what he just posted on Facebook about it was just, because he thought about doing a podcast forever and I was the one that was like, “Dude, just do it. You’d be awesome at it. Just jump off the cliff.” And he said that by doing it, it was really cool. He’s like, “I found my voice. People started finding me. Other people referred people and my audience grew. I have people listening to my voice every single day and it’s just like such a good thing.”
But again, it’s all about just doing it. And the more you do it, the better, the more your message will get clear, the better you’ll find your voice, the more comfortable you’ll feel. The nicest thing about these mass media things that we have, podcasts and videos, webinars, things like that, is that even if you’re introverted you can still do this because you don’t have to talk face to face to anybody. You can do group selling, group everything and it’s awesome.
So there you go, that’s all I got. I’m going to go get this kid to bed, get his homework done so I can go to bed because I am so tired. Appreciate you all, talk to you soon. Bye.
The two most important things your can do between now and the end of the year to double your business for next year.
On today’s episode talks about his upcoming meeting with his partners to plan next year, and goes on to explain why he’s simplifying his value ladder and his life. Here are some awesome things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out how you too can simplify your value ladder.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, so I’m out walking, I just took the garbage out. If you look out here it is getting close to Christmas time, Thanksgiving is over. For those who are watching the video, these are the lights we have wrapped around our house, lighting up for the Christmas holiday, which is kind of fun. So I’m just going to walk around here so you guys can see my face and get enough light to connect on camera. For those who are listening in, I hope you had an amazing holiday, Thanksgiving, getting ready for the end of the year.
The end of the year is always a fun time for us marketers and entrepreneurs because it’s focusing and planning for the beginning of next year, which is coming soon. So it’s kind of fun, we got not this week but next week, Todd and Ryan and everyone’s flying here to Boise and we’re going to be doing a big partner meeting and planning out the rest of this year, world domination for next year and set our big HAG’s, our big hairy audacious goals, figure out what we’re going to do and reverse engineer that to make it possible.
It was kind of fun, I was watching a podcast I did last year that basically said, “These are our goals, here are the five Hail Mary passes we’re going to do to try to hit those goals.” If you haven’t listened to that podcast, rewind to about a year ago and listen to it. That’s what’s going to be the goal of this meeting. We’re going to set our big goal, what we’re trying do and then I’m not going to just have one execution plan, but here’s four or five things we’re going to do to hit that goal, if one or two of them hit, then we’ll hit these crazy big goals. That’s what we’re going to be doing, not this week, but next week. So I’m sure I’ll be doing podcasts from there talking about it.
But I’m excited for that. If you haven’t done that yet, make sure this year before the end of the year that you spend some time and block it out with your team and do that. Figure out again, what’s the big goal, and reverse engineer what you gotta do to make that happen. And then from there figure out 3 or 4 different Hail Mary passes that you gotta throw to get your big goal. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be doing, I’m excited for it and it’s going to be fun.
So what I wanted to share with you guys tonight really quick before I head back in, because it’s a really beautiful night. It’s not too cold, it’s just kind of nice for a little walk around the yard. So what I’ve been working on, on my side, and I talked about this a little bit after inner circle meetings, one of the big aha’s. It’s kind of funny how we go through these cycles, we know things and then we forget them and re-realize them. But the Dotcom Secrets book we talk a lot about the value ladder, right. And it’s funny because ever since we launched Expert Secrets we haven’t talked as much about that. Because Expert Secrets is all about figuring out the first part, the what and how. What are you selling and how are you selling it.
So it’s like figuring out how to create your offer and how to position yourself, create your mass movement, figure out what you believe and what you don’t believe, what’s your future based cause, who are your people, all those kind of things. And then you create a message, presentation to get people to follow you to sell your products and that process takes a little while. You gotta re-do your presentation four, five, or six times until you get it perfect, and then you’re driving traffic and you keep doing that. And eventually if you do it enough times, follow the process, do a webinar live every single week for a while, keep tweaking and changing based on what we talked about in the book, eventually you hit it and you know you hit it because you go from $0 to a million dollars fast.
That is when you’ve figured out the what and the how. What it is you’re actually selling, and how you sell it. So eventually you get that figured out. Now the next phase is really shifting back to the Dotcom Secrets stuff. Now you got customers coming in, and this is where entrepreneurs start freaking out because then they start talking about the value ladder. I need upsells and downsells and backends and frontends, and they start going crazy.
And what I want to talk about is the big aha I had from the inner circle meetings. I’m watching the people that are crushing it and the ones who are struggling, and the consistency amongst the people in the inner circle that are killing it is that most of them came in and had one thing figured out, and they got that working. That’s about the time they joined the inner circle, right. Because people need to be making about a million bucks a year to be in there. So it’s kind of the fit, right. So they came in the group then, and then they’re trying to figure out what’s the next, how does it all work?
And really what’s interesting, the people who are growing the fastest, what they’re doing is they’re very systematically building out the backend of the value ladder. And most value ladders are simple, in fact, traditionally most people making money, they focus on the middle first. The webinar or something like that in the middle. They build out the backend, whatever that thing is, and then that’s done. You have the middle and the backend and it stops. You don’t keep creating any more backend stuff. That’s the end of it.
And then what your business is moving forward is creating new front end offers that bring people into the middle of the value ladder, which is essentially the backend. And I started looking, it was interesting, I lost my way, I’d forgotten these lessons. It’s funny, I kind of created them in the Dotcom Secrets book and I forgot some of them. It’s been a little while since I revisited those thoughts. And what I realized is that my value ladder came and kind of split up and broke off and there’s all these different things that people could do. And it was, we’re monetizing a bunch of them, but there’s confusion.
So it’s interesting, there’s actually two programs that we have, both that do well over a million bucks over a year that I am turning off. Not because they’re not awesome, they are. Not because they’re not making money, they are. It’s because they don’t, they’re deviants, they deviate off the value ladder. My value ladder’s very, very simple moving forward. So the rest of this year, I’m trying to get these few things in place to execute on that. But it’s very simple.
What it is, we have a webinar where I sell Clickfunnels, Funnel Building Secrets, which is the new Funnel Hacks, Funnel Scripts and Traffic Secrets. Those four products, bundled together, own six full months of Clickfunnels for $2,000. That’s what I sell, that’s the thing.
I did a webinar a couple of weeks ago, it did really well. That’s what I sell, that’s the middle of the value ladder, $2,000 thing. On the backend of that we have our Two Comma Club Coaching, which will be releasing here probably at the live event. And that will be where we take everyone to and that’s the value ladder, that’s the backend. Inner Circle is full, so we’re not taking any more people in there. So we’re going $2,000 for Clickfunnels and then whatever the pricing is on the Two Comma Club coaching that’s coming up and that’s it. And that won’t deviate, that won’t change. That’ll be the same for forever.
And all I will be doing, from this point forward for hopefully the rest of my life, the rest of my business career is just creating cool frontends. So I’ll have the Dotcom Secrets book, which is a frontend, then the Expert Secrets book, which is a frontend, eventually we’ll have Traffic Secrets, the Marketing Secrets and other ones. Perfect webinar, all these other things. I’ll just be having fun and creating frontends, but the only point of frontend is to get people to ascend up to the $2,000 and from the $2,000 to the Two Comma Club coaching. And that’s it, that’s my business.
And I get to figure out cool and new ways to sell frontends and that’s all I’m doing, selling frontends. That’s it. So it’s very simple. So all of your creative juices in entrepreneurship is on figuring out the next event, the next backend and all that kind of stuff, it should be simple. It should just be, what’s a cool frontend we can drive more people into. And that’s kind of the game, so I’m excited. You’ll see some of the tweaks I’m making now with this severe hyper focus on the value ladder.
Somebody buys the Expert Secrets book, if I know that this is my severe hyper focus thing, what’s the process I’m taking them? They buy the book, they go through the upsell, downsell process, the thank you page I’ll have a live presentation right there of me pitching the $2,000 thing. Right there and after they finish that it’s like, “Hey, do you want to apply for coaching? Come here.” And it’s just, that’s the process, very simple, very easy. We’ll just replicate it over and over again.
So anyway, I’m simplifying my business, simplifying my life. Hopefully those of you listening to this will simplify earlier, not later. Because sometimes we get all excited and then next thing we know there’s a billion things happening and….simplify now.
Anyway, that’s all I got for you. I’m heading in right now; get to bed because we got a crazy week starting tomorrow, which I’m excited for. Hopefully this gives you guys a couple of things. Number one, hopefully it gives you guys some thoughts on doing your team core planning meeting with you and your partners. If it’s just and your employees or whatever it is, if it’s just you and your spouse, or just you. Sit down and plan next year’s goals, figure out, reverse engineer what you need to do to actually execute on that and hit them and then figure out what the 3 or 4 Hail Mary passes are you’re going to need to throw to be able to get the big goals.
And number two is really map out your value ladder, try to simplify it as much as you can. That’s what I’m doing. You guys will see it, coming January first, a bunch of new, fun, clean, simplified things will be coming out of team Clickfunnels here. So I’m excited for it. That’s all I got.
If you haven’t got your tickets for funnel hacking live yet, they’re getting close to being sold out. We sold a ton of them over this last weekend. So if you don’t have your tickets yet, now is the time, go to funnelhackinglive.com. That’s about it. With that said, appreciate you all, thanks for listening, thanks for subscribing and we’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
This is the marketing secret I’m dusting off from the archives of one of the greatest campaigns we ever ran.
On this episode Russell talks about going old school with a technique he used to use that worked every single time. He gives all the information you need to be able to do it for your business. Here are some cool things on this episode:
So listen below to find out what awesome technique Russell used in the past with massive success, that he plans on using again.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I got something exciting I want to share with you right now.
Alright everybody, there’s something I talked a lot about in my inner circle recently, it seems like a lot of people are launching membership programs, membership sites. Have you guys ever had something where you did something really successful for a long time and for some reason you stopped doing it and then you don’t know why you did?
So that’s one of these ideas that came out, so I shared it with a bunch of them and they’re all going crazy and a bunch of them are all trying it out right . I was like, man, this should be a marketing secret that I share with everyone else. So I’m bringing it to the podcast.
So this is what it is. This is a way, if you’ve got a membership site, to stimulate growth really, really rapidly. It can help you get a hundred signups in like a day, or 200 hundred or 1,000 depending on how big your thing is. How to get a whole bunch really, really quick. I haven’t yet done this with Clickfunnels, but I’m going to. Maybe I’ll do it on January 1st….anyway, I don’t know.
But I used to do this back in the day on our membership sites and I saw initially, the person I modeled and did this first was a guy name Alex Mendosian and they did it to fill up a whole bunch of people in their software program, which was kind of cool. So I watched them do it, and then I did it four or five times afterwards and it worked amazingly well every single time and then for some reason I stopped doing it. Because that’s what we do, when things work we just stop doing them sometimes. The ADD-ness of an entrepreneurs mind.
Anyway, so this is a really important, really cool one. So this is the strategy. I will walk you through all the pieces, and hopefully it gives you guys a tool you can use anytime you want to sell some stuff really, really quick. So what we do, is we would promote it, I did it back in the day of the teleseminars. I think it would still work with teleseminars, in fact, it’s almost….anyway, who knows. It will definitely work with webinars as well, or Facebook Live, or a lot of different ways you could do it. But the big key is you’re promoting an event. The event is to talk about something cool. A new discovery you’ve figured out which is brand new to whatever you do.
There’s different ways to position it. If you read the Dotcom Secrets book there’s 5 different curiosity hooks we have in there. But my favorite one for this is, “Oh my gosh, I figured out this thing, I want to show it to you guys live. So you have to be on this thing because I’m going to teach you, show you, walk you behind the scenes of this new thing that just came out.” A new discovery is the hook that I love for this the most.
For example, last time we did this, this was back when we had, when we were focusing more on business opportunity seekers as opposed to entrepreneurs, and we had figured out a way to generate leads, it was really cool what we were doing. We were going to CPA networks and there were these offers that were getting a thousand sales a day and the people who had these offers, would actually sell you the leads. It’s not a strategy that I believe in or I would recommend or I don’t think anyone should ever do, but it was a really cool thing.
So we were tapping into these CPA networks so that offers, basically when someone would opt in for an offer and then they would buy that person’s product and we would get the lead put into our auto responder, kind of like code reds, but a little different. We were getting a couple thousand leads a day coming in and it was really, really cool. I probably shouldn’t have told you that because now some of you guys will be like, “Teach us that.” But don’t. It’s a horrible idea. It will get your auto responder shut down; people won’t know who you are. It’s not spamming, but it’s as close as you can get without having legal issues. So don’t do it, it’s bad.
But back then, it was the new opportunity, the new thing. I was like, oh my gosh this is amazing. So what I did, I did this teleseminar. I was like, “Hey I want you guys to jump on and I’m going to show you this new way that we found out to get an extra three thousand leads a day. And it’s happening every single day, it’s crazy.” People are like, “What?!” They’re going crazy, they want the thing. So they get on, and this is a mini, it’s not a perfect webinar, so don’t think of it as the perfect webinar. This is me talking about a new discovery I just had and I’m going to teach them what it is. I said that with emphasis on purpose. I’m teaching what it is. What is the thing.
So it’s the what, not to be confused with the how. There’s a what and there’s a how. So this is the what. This is what this new thing is. So for 45 minutes I told the story about how I figured this thing out and where I met this person and how it worked and I showed them exactly what it was and here are the offers that the CPA offers in there. And here’s how you plug in your auto responder and this is what it was. And from there we’re getting three thousand leads a day, coming in consistently.
So I showed the what and people were going nuts. Oh my gosh, I want to do this. But the problem is they know the what, but they don’t understand the how. How you actually do it, how you find the offers, the people, how do you negotiate, how much is it going to cost? All those kind of things. So they know the what, but not the how.
So you show them the what in a 45 minute thing and this is basically you telling the story about how you figured out the what. If you tell them the story about how you figured out the what and the result you’re getting from the what, and they’re like, “What the dump?” that’s a Brunsonism I think. “What the dump?”
And then at that point you step back and say, it’s a clock, so you start at the top of the hour, spend 45 minutes. And at that point where they’re like, “What the dump? I need this.” You say, “Wait, I actually am not going to show you, I don’t have to show you this right now. But for all of my members over here inside of Clickfunnels, inside of my membership site, inside of whatever my thing is, I’m going to be doing a 90 minute break down and I’m going to show you exactly how to do this. HOW to do this.”
“So if you’re a member, congratulations! Log into the members area, the call in number or the login number for the webinar is right there on the dashboard. It’s there, go login, jump on the training. This is a live training, I’m doing live. I’m not recording it, I’m not going to share it ever again. It’s happening one time and one time only. If you want it, now is the time. So go login to the members area, and go login.”
“If you’re not a member yet, you’ve got exactly 15 minutes before this training starts. In 15 minutes the clock hits the top of the hour, I pull it off the page, and if you wait to sign up til 5 minutes later, you missed your shot. It is gone forever. The only way to ever understand the how on how to do this, is to be on that live training. In fact, we got 3 other experts, the people you need to meet, the person who’s going to help you get this thing started, whatever it is, is going to be there on the call. But this is a onetime only, not being recorded, and it starts in exactly 14 minutes. So you better hurry now. Go sign up right now for the trial at whatever.com.”
You push them into the membership site fast. People freak out. They’ve got this 15 minute window to go signup, get their account, get logged in, get the downloading, so they can get in on this special live training to show them the how. So that’s the marketing secret. That’s the trick you guys, it’s like the coolest thing ever.
So again, to kind of recap, you’ve got to have a really cool new discovery. You have a new discovery and you want to show them what it is. You get people to come onto either Facebook Live, the teleseminar, or the webinar, it doesn’t matter the vehicle you’re doing it through, just get it on a live event that’s happening so you build some curiosity, anticipation, getting excited. You get on there and say, “This is the what. I’m going to show it to you.” And you tell the story about how you figured out the what, you show them the big result that you got from this what.
And you say, “look, in 15 minutes for all of our paid members, we’re starting the how training. So go login and jump on the how training, we’re going to show you what to do. If you are a member, congratulations, it’s in the members area. If you’re not a member yet, you have 15 minutes before this puppy goes live, so now’s the time to start running. And go.” And you’ll watch your phone with all your stripe notifications, “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.”
I’ve seen times when we’ve signed up 4 or 500 people in 15 minutes for membership sites, which is insane. So it works. Let’s say your list is smaller, you only sign up 100 people. It’s fine, the conversion rates on these, especially if you have a free trial for the membership site, the conversion rates on these things are like 50% of the people who are on your webinar will sign up, it’s crazy.
Again, I have not done one for a long time, but I’m going to probably do one for Clickfunnels here maybe in January. That’ll be fun. I’m going to do it, you’ll see me execute on it. But most of you guys should have enough intel to be able to do it faster.
So there you go, the what and the how is pretty awesome. I hope you guys love it, I hope you guys use it. Let me know if you do, and if you got any value from this, please share this episode and all episodes with your friends, your family members, other marketers, people you know could benefit from this. Again, this is the Marketing Secrets podcast, thanks so much for everything, and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.
A conversation I had today explains the reason why most businesses end up suffocating and dying.
On today’s episode Russell talks about something awesome he witnessed with his kids school. He goes on to talk about discussing marketing with another parent at school and why he considers it the lifeblood of a business. Here are some of the insightful things in this episode:
So listen here to find out why you need to become obsessed with the marketing of your product, rather than the product itself.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you guys are doing amazing today.
Alright everybody, it is the day before Thanksgiving. We have 20 bubble soccer balls being delivered to my house; we’re going to be playing a huge bubble soccer game on the smurf turf, which is really exciting. Or the Astroturf, we call it smurf turf because of the blue here in Boise. Looking forward to that.
But everything’s getting ready. We had wrestling practice this morning with the kiddos, and I had some cool experiences that happened there. One that was just a special moment that I want to share with you guys and one that was the reason why most people aren’t successful in business. So I’ll give you both and hopefully you’ll learn a lesson from the two.
So number one, it’s really cool. At the kids school, there’s a kid, it’s kind of a crazy story. Apparently his mom and him both found out they had cancer about the same time, together. It’s a cute little family, a little kid named Nico. So at the Junior high, or middle school, whatever you call it, it’s gotten around this story, and trying to help them out. It was just cute, all the kids wear Huskies for Nico t-shirts. Dallin had a shirt on today that said Huskies for Nico. They do fundraisers for Nico and all these things, it’s just such a cool thing how they’ve gotten the school behind this one person, this one cause or movement.
And its cool, I always talk about building mass movements and things like that, but I think a lot of times these little private, intimate movements that mean so much to people and really help people to become something more. And it’s just cool watching this and watching my kids participate in this movement for a little kid in their school named Nico.
So today at wrestling practice we got all these, probably 60 or 70 wrestlers out there training to be warriors, trying to be tough and everything. In the middle of practice Nico and his dad came in, and when he walked in the whole room went silent out of respect for him. It was just one of the neatest experiences that I’ve witnessed in a long time. I got chills sitting there watching and all the kids sitting there looking at him and talking to him. They came in and they presented him, because Nico was a wrestler as well before all these problems happened. So they gave him wrestling t-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff like that. And then they had Nico lead a cheer. So they brought everyone in and did their cheer. And it was such a special, such a cool thing. So anyway that was a fun thing that happened today.
And then afterwards I was talking to one of the dads, and the dad’s a successful real estate dude here in Boise, and it’s kind of funny because he’s like, “Hey I recognize you. I see you in my newsfeed every single day.” I’m like, “Sorry about that. Wish I was better looking.” But it was kind of funny because he was in there and we were talking for a while afterwards and it was interesting because there’s a big reason why more people aren’t successful. It’s a mindset little tweak and it’s something he had, definitely. So I want to share with you because if you’re stuck in this mindset tweak, it’s what’s keeping you back.
I did a podcast episode, I don’t know a hundred podcasts ago talking about not outsourcing your lovemaking, and in there I talked about if you look at a business, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. If you’re selling houses, cars, supplements, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, you’re selling. That part doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, the marketing is the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing that’s actually the lifeblood of a business. It’s what drives leads and customers and sales. It’s the only thing that actually matters.
I could take my marketing systems and plug them into any business and it will work. Because business psychology’s insane, how we can get leads and it’s the same, how we convert those leads is the same. So we’re talking to him and he’s like, “Yeah, I saw Clickfunnels. I just haven’t done it yet.” I’m like, “Oh, whatever.” It doesn’t affect me at all. And he’s like, “Can I ask a question? Do you guys do stuff for real estate agents? I watched the viral video with the squirrel and the prospector, sounds like it’s only for selling products.” I’m like, “No, it’s for, it generates leads, sells products, whatever you need it to be.” And he’s like, “Oh, do you have anyone in real estate doing it?” I’m like, “Yeah, we have tons of people.” Off the top of my head we have like a half a dozen people or so that are killing it, real estate agents using it.
In fact I even told him, “There’s a guy that’s got one of the biggest brokerages here in Boise, he’s using it.” He’s like, “I hired some marketing company to do that for me and they’re trying to get us leads.” And I’m like, “So is it working good?” and he’s like, “No, not really. I wish we could just get rid of all the leads, but all the other agents underneath us, they want the internet leads so we have to do that and I don’t like it. I just think it’s done. Right now we’re selling about a hundred houses a year, if we got to the point where we had 200 houses a year, then we could afford to hire a full time marketing person to generate leads and stuff.”
As a marketing guy here, I wanted to grab the guy and be like, “What are you…how do you not understand this?” it’s like saying, let’s say you’re struggling in your marriage and you’re like, “My wife and I when we start having, when marriage gets good and we’re happy and everything is perfect, then we’ll go to counseling.” No, counseling or whatever it is, is what gets you there. It’s just funny, when we’ve grown high enough that we can afford someone to generate leads, then we’ll generate leads. No, you can’t afford not to. You should stop everything you’re doing and the only thing you should do is generate leads.
It’s funny because he’s like, “The biggest person in town, they sell a thousand houses a month, but they’re doing all of it online and generating all these leads online, but they’re able to do it because they’re selling so many houses.” I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. It’s because they’re doing that they’re able to sell so many houses. It’s not because they have so many houses they can do it. It’s like the chicken and the egg. It’s like you’re trying to cut off the oxygen to your brain, your brain will stop. So don’t, it is the lifeblood….”
And he’s like, “Can we hire you guys to do that stuff for me?” I’m like, “No, we certify people that can do it, but if you really want to be successful, you have to become the head of the marketing. You cannot outsource your lovemaking. You can’t do that in business and expect it to be awesome. In your marriage if you’re like, okay this is my wife, I’m going to outsource the lovemaking to somebody else, your marriage is going to fail. It’s the same thing in your business. It is the lifeblood, it is the thing that gets customers into your world and gets them to like you and believe you and trust you and give you money. It’s the most important part of business.”
I think the biggest problem, it’s funny, if you listen to the Emyth by Michael Gerber, he talks about this. People are technicians and they have an entrepreneurial seizure and they think they want to start a business because they work at a cake factory and they see the dude who runs the cake shop and they’re like, “This guys a moron, I could do a better job than that.” So they start their own business and they’re not entrepreneurs, they’re dudes that build cakes. It’s like, the dude that builds the cake, anyone can build a cake. You can hire a lot of people to do that. It’s the person who is going to actually sell the crap out of the cakes that runs the business. If you don’t have that, your business dies.
It’s funny, in 2008 when the economy crashed and all these companies were crashing, I see all these people in the companies that their first instinct was not, let’s lower costs on stupid stuff. They all cut their marketing and their sales budget. I’m like, okay we’re struggling, let’s cut off the lifeblood to our head.
Like in wrestling, when I’m wrestling somebody, there’s a little, for those watching the video, right here on both sides of your neck there is a thing called a carotid artery. And if I’m wrestling someone and I get them in a front headlock, if I put a little bit of pressure right there, against the carotid artery, that fast the blood flow stops to your head.
It’s not like someone chokes and eventually you die. But with the carotid artery, if I touch it right, that fast you will black out. It’s really fun when you’re wrestling somebody, when you’re getting it, you get it and boom, and his whole body goes limp and you flip him over and you pin him. Because it’s the blood that goes to your brain. If you cut off the blood, it’s like a second and you’re out cold. And I take it back off and the blood keeps coming and you’re back alive.
So companies go and cut off the lifeblood and then the company dies that fast. That is what’s keeping you alive. In times of bad economy, triple down on the advertizing, triple down on the marketing. You guys all know that. I’m preaching to the choir here. But for everyone else, I just wanted to kind of talk about that because I thought it was so funny.
I told him that and he’s like, “Oh, lead generation for me is nurturing the clients we have and things like that, and we can’t outsource that. That’s my lovemaking.” Or something. Anyway, so that’s all I gotta say. I don’t even know what to say. If you want to grow a company, focus on the marketing and sales of the thing. I know most of you guys are in business because you love the thing you do. That’s awesome. But if you want to have a lot of people use that thing, you’ve got to become obsessed with the marketing of the thing. That is the key, the marketing of the thing is the business. The business is not the thing.
The thing is the fulfillment of whatever you want to do, but the business is the marketing of the thing. And that’s the only thing that actually matters because without that, your company dies. With that, the lifeblood goes off to your brain and instantly you’re out cold. That’s why I look at us versus other SAAS companies, other SAAS companies are focusing on hiring these huge teams of people to do whatever, I don’t know what they even do. We focus on marketing, marketing drives it.
So there you go guys. I hope that helps some of you guys who are thinking and wondering, “I’m going to hire a marketing team.” It’s hard to do. You can do it, but if you really want to grow, you’ve got to become obsessed with the marketing of your thing. You’ve got to not try to outsource your lovemaking and realize that that is the business. And if you want to be in business, you want to be an entrepreneur, like the entrepreneurial seizure you had trying to start this cake company or your whatever thing is that you sell. If you want that baby to survive and to live, being obsessed with the thing is not going to do it. It’s being obsessed with the marketing of the thing.
So I hope that helps, I appreciate you all. I’m going to go, I got a couple of hours to work, get my to-do list killed, crushed so I can have a Thanksgiving that’s not stressful. For those who know, us entrepreneurs, my buddy Alex Charfen always says, we’re all about momentum. So it’s like, Thanksgiving scares me because there’s no momentum. I gotta get so much momentum over the next four hours; before I gotta go back home that it will knock down any dominoes tomorrow that are standing up when I’m trying to relax with the family. So that’s it you guys. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day. Bye.
If you structure your value ladder right, you’ll never have to do a payment plan.
On this episode Russell answers a question posted on Facebook about why he doesn’t do payment plans. Here are some of the awesome things he has to say in today’s episode.
So listen here to find out why Russell doesn’t usually give an option for payment plans.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? It’s Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Tonight we are going to be hanging out with some Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Alright so, why am I talking real quiet? Because it’s late at night and the wife and kids, everyone is asleep. Why am I eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Because I have committed that by Funnel Hacking Live I’m going to be in shape. So, Bart Miller who helped dress me at Funnel Hacking Live, he just went through this big body transformation, got ripped with a six pack and everything. I was like, “Alright Bart, we’re going to do it, just get me in shape.” So we’re going to do it, but it doesn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving, so I got a week to eat garbage. I’ve been eating really healthy for the last 6 months, right now I’m going to go as unhealthy as possible so I’m eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch at like midnight. How great is that? I’m pretty excited about that.
Alright, I was just going through Facebook right now and somebody asked a good question, they said, “How come RB (I’m assuming that’s me, hopefully), why doesn’t Russell use payment plans on anything?” It was fun because all the, everyone’s just kind of throwing out their guess of why they think I don’t use payment plans and stuff like that. I’m just going to tell you why.
A couple of things, first off, it’s not that I don’t believe in payment plans. I think a lot of times you will make more money when you offer payment plans, but there’s just things about it that drive me crazy. Especially online, one of the big ones to drive me crazy is the fact that there’s no repercussions if someone signs up for a thousand dollar course and you give three payments or whatever, and they do one of the three payments and then they don’t do anything else. There’s nothing you can do, you can’t go after them, you can’t call them out. It’s just kind of frustrating.
In the digital world, unfortunately there are a lot of people who, they’ll get one payment through, they’ll go through some of the course, then they’ll feel okay not doing it. It just kind of bugs me. That’s not really the real reason. You know the real reason why I don’t do them for the most part, and I won’t say that I won’t do them because there’ll be situations I’m sure I will in the future. One of our new higher coaching programs will be having a payment program, which I’ve never done that in the past, but we will be just to be helping people with cash flow and stuff like that.
But the main reason I don’t is because, one person commented and said, “Russell doesn’t do it because Russell’s rule is don’t sell to broke people.” And well, that’s mostly true. It’s not that I don’t like broke people or that I don’t want to help them. But if you study my stuff, especially Dotcom Secrets, in the book I talk about the value ladder. I’m taking people up the value ladder and I know full well that people likely come into my world and they don’t have money when they first come in. So I’m like, okay how can I provide the most value possible so they have everything they need to be successful? On the front end, on my books, my perfect webinar training, things like that that are free plus shipping or really, really low price. I don’t hold stuff back on that.
Dan Henrie’s a good example, he struggled for years, read the Dotcom Secrets book, learned how to do my webinar, did it and made a million bucks in 5 months. I’ve been giving away the perfect webinar now for 2 or 3 years, just the script and the video and power point slides. And people always ask me, “Why do you give it away for free, your best stuff?” I’m like, “Because if someone uses it and they make money, they can afford my expensive stuff.”
So for me, that’s really more of my goal. I want people to come in and I want them to use the stuff I have and it makes them more money and then they can come for the next things. If they’re jumping up four or five tiers, if they have money that’s fine, they can short cut success, but I almost feel like sometimes, it does not serve your customer to short cut their success.
When we first started doing Funnel Hacker Tv the very first time, I was just taking businesses, a few I liked, the people, the entrepreneur, but they weren’t having success yet. We would come in and just do all the work for them, launching their businesses. And what we found is people weren’t ready for that. We’d launch it and hand it back to them, and the people who get these businesses back, they hadn’t learned all the stuff they needed to have success with it. And they struggled and then despite the fact that I gave them the keys to a Ferrari, they couldn’t drive the Ferrari.
I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice. Sometimes people just jump too far too fast, spend a bunch of money they don’t have, and then try the thing and it doesn’t really work because they don’t have the foundation stuff they need to get there. Business is all about for us, increasing our capacity. When you first start a business you have a big capacity to do a lot of stuff. I did, when I got started my capacity was, I struggled to read a book. Then I read a book and I was like, that book was awesome, and my capacity expanded a little bit and I did more and it expanded, more and it expanded.
Now 15 years later we run a huge company where we’re one of the top two or three most visited websites in the world. Making a lot of money, doing a lot of stuff, helping a lot of people, all those things. But if I would have just been handed this 15 years ago, I promise you I would have destroyed it. Not because I wanted to, but because I wasn’t ready for it. And I think a lot of times, I know I could sell more stuff if I offered these huge payment plans to let people in, but the reality is someone comes in on a payment plan they can’t afford and they’re trying to learn stuff and then they can’t afford it, and then they go buy traffic and other things they need to do and they can’t afford it, it doesn’t really serve them more, or me.
So I want people to grow with us. So that’s why we do stuff, the way low ticket stuff, mid tier, high tier things like that. That way people come in, they learn, they apply, and if they get value they should naturally ascend up, right. It’s kind of like in my stack I have a line that I say in there, it’s funny because it’s a really good closing line, and I’ve had a lot of people knock it off since I started using it, but it’s true for me.
For me it says, “I have a philosophy here at my company that if I can’t make you money then I don’t deserve yours.” And I honestly do believe that, which is why I don’t just go hard close them on these huge payment plans. We see a lot of people do product launches, they’re selling a $2,000 course, or twelve payments of $300. I’m like, the problem with $300, I remember me in those days and that was a lot of money. It almost does them a disservice. If I have twelve payments of $300, twelve months from now, I’m going to have my stuff in place and start buying ads again because I got this huge budget of $300 a month. So that’s kind of my thoughts.
So I hope that kind of helps. Again, it’s not that I won’t do payment plans, I will do them in the future. There will times and seasons I will do them. A lot of businesses I recommend them. So it’s nothing against them, I just think for me personally, that’s my goal, that’s my vision. Just try to blow people’s minds at every step of the value ladder, and if I do that correctly then they’ll be able to afford the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
You know, I could tell you probably a couple dozen examples of this but Dan Henrie is one of my favorites. He joined the Inner circle and he posted on Facebook. He was like, “I don’t know why I joined Russell’s inner circle, I feel like I got, I made a bunch of money and everything, I don’t really need to be, I don’t really want to be in it. But I feel like I owed Russell 25k for all I got for the free book I bought.”
How cool is that if your customers feel that way. Man, I got so much from this I feel like I owe you. I need to invest in higher ticket things because I got so much down here. That’s what I’m trying to create.
So there you go, I hope that helps you guys. I hope it helps you, again, obviously we’re talking about this for my business which is teaching business owners how to grow. So it’s very applicable because it’s like “Hey make money here and grow.” But it’s the same with any business. Let’s say your business is helping marriages right. You give them something free and it increases the spark in their relationship or it fixes something and they feel better, man they will want to give you more and follow you further and all that kind of stuff.
So anyway, it’s a fun game we play. I love it. I appreciate you guys, as customers, as friends, as subscribers, listeners, and I hope that you got some good ideas out of this, I’m going to get back to eating my Cinnamon Toast Crunch before it all gets cold, gets soggy. It’s a little soggy already so I’m going to go. And by Funnel Hacking Live I will be sexy. I promise you guys, I will have a six pack. And if not then I won’t say anything else about it. Alright everybody, talk to you soon. Bye.
A quick play-by-play of the last 24 hours of my crazy life.
On this episode Russell talks about the last 24 hours of his life and the events that made it feel crazy. Here are some of the interesting things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to see why Russell’s last 24 hours have been such a stressful roller-coaster ride.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Tonight is going to be a late night reflections episode.
Alright, I don’t know if that’s really a thing, a reflection episode, but it has been, the last 24 hours of my life have been insane. I learned some really good lessons along the way. I just wanted to sit here and talk it out with you guys if you don’t mind. Hopefully you’ll get something out of it.
So some of the back story, we are in November, for those who are watching or listening to this later, it’s almost Thanksgiving; it’s about a week away. It’s been interesting, working on a lot of really neat, amazing projects and some things that I feel are part of, I don’t know, it sounds cliché but part of my mission in this life. It’s not building, it is indirectly building funnels, but it’s for who we’re building them for, what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish with it. Things that are really, really good in life.
And what’s interesting, I know that everyone listening has got different beliefs, but what’s interesting is whenever you try to do something good, the adversary, call it whatever you want, fights against it. And I was starting this project with this group we believe in and start moving down this path, I was warned by a lot of people who were in this project saying, “As you start trying to move forward towards this thing, the adversary, or whatever you want to call it, is going to fight against you.” I was like, okay bring it on.
And it’s crazy because I’m starting to see, maybe not, maybe it’s just my mind, but as we’re moving towards this thing, I’m just noticing a lot of stuff happening. So the last 24 hours were crazy. So right now, I think it’s 11 at night. I just got my kids to bed. About 26 hours ago, a little longer than a day, 24 or 25 hours, whatever it was, a little over a day ago, I had just gone to bed as well. It was just a normal night, I was going to be staying up late working because my wife had just left to Disneyland yesterday, she’s out with her girly friends doing Disneyland. So I was like, I’ll have some time to work, catch up on some projects.
I was going to start on them, and by the time I got the kids down and was about to come and start working, I got a text message from Melanie saying, “Hey, this weird thing is happening.” It’s kind of cool, someone from my inner circle saw something where basically lawsuits were being filed against us. They’d seen it ahead of time. We got spies everywhere around the world. Anyway, so we looked at it and it was kind of a violation. Basically it was somebody had gotten, we found out later, it’s been 24 hours. But it was a text message that they’d gotten that they said that they didn’t want to receive from us.
So instead of just being a normal human being and being like, “Oh, I don’t want to receive this text message.” this person is filing this huge lawsuit against us. It’s crazy. So we got the name and number and all sorts of stuff and it’s crazy. Somebody signed up for Clickfunnels with a fake credit card, it wasn’t even a real credit card, logged in twice and never logged in again, their credit card failed. So our system, when your credit card fails, actually when you log into Clickfunnels, there’s a little thing saying, “Hey, if your credit card failed, would you like us to text you? If so what number?” So you put in the number.
So the credit card failed, so we texted saying, “Hey, we don’t want your websites to go down, you should login to your Clickfunnels account, add your credit card so you don’t lose your websites. It sent him two text messages, this was like 2 or 3 months ago. So this person, it’s insane, gets these text messages and files a lawsuit against us. A lawsuit, for crying out loud. For irreparable damages and on and on. It’s just nuts, nuts.
So it’s funny because I always heard about frivolous lawsuits and it’s just like, I always thought those were like, I couldn’t fathom that those were a real thing, that human beings were like that. But it’s just like, I just saw it, I’m seeing it right now. I’m like, holy crap. It’s funny because, it’s interesting, when you don’t have money you’re like, “Oh, if I just had money all my problems would go away.” I got bad news for you guys. Problems don’t go away, they just turn into different problems, more annoying problems, where literally people are shooting at you and attacking you all the time. It’s nuts.
So I get that message about that, so we’re trying to just research and figure that out. I can’t think about this, I got too much stuff to do. So I kind of put it on the back burner, sat down at the computer right there, my work computer where the Expert Secrets book was written. Sit down at the work computer, check my email, and there’s two emails. First email was from this organization we’re working with to try do a lot of good in the world and save a lot of kids lives, this thing that we’re moving forward on, do the ultimate good. Then the email that came in literally a minute before or after that one was from this other person.
I’m not going to tell the back story behind this because it’s not important. But it’s a person I dealt with three years ago. This huge email, I haven’t heard from him in over a year, huge email talking about, going on and on about how they’re going to sue me for all these crazy things. I’m just like, I can’t even, I don’t know how to handle this right now. It was just crazy.
I did my best to get a handle on it, but I gotta get this out of my mind because I gotta get some stuff done. So I was up until about 2 last night working, passed out, the kids were up this morning at like 6, so I got four hours of sleep last. Got up, got the kids ready because my wife’s gone. Luckily we have help, a nanny who comes and helps get the kids out the door and everything with school. And then, head in to the office, have a ton of stuff going on, obviously, we’re trying to coordinate so much stuff. I wish I could, just let you have a glimpse of all the stuff we’re doing at once. I don’t think people would believe it. There’s a lot happening, obviously. It happens when you’re trying to change the world.
It’s fun, we did a podcast with Nathan Latka, the top, if you’ve ever heard his podcast, it’s really, really good. I did a podcast 18 months ago with him, and we did another one to follow up with him now. We’re 5x of where we were at 18 months ago, which is insane. It was really cool recapping all the positive growth that we’re doing. It was cool, when the questions he asked at the end, he’s like, “Most business owners reinvest their profits back in their company, that’s where they get the highest return on investment. Where do you invest your money Russell?”
And I laughed, “You know, we reinvest money back in the company, but for me, I didn’t start a business to reinvest money back in the company.” He’s like, “So wait, real estate? Where are you reinvesting your money?” I’m like “I’m not reinvesting in anything. I reinvest it in my kids, my family. Right now we have an acre and a half, two acre lot next to our house that was just full of weeds, so this summer we knocked down all the weeds and put in a full Astroturf baseball/soccer field. We put in 9 underground trampolines, a volleyball court, a baseball field, a full basketball court and a track that wraps the whole thing. I’m investing my money back in my kids. I want to spend weekends and night with my kids playing games. That’s why I got in the business. The cash flow is nice, but that’s what I’m reinvesting my profits back into, you know.”
It was kind of just a fun answer because I’m sure most people on a business podcast don’t think that way, they think about whatever business, real business people think about. Anyway, so that was kind of fun and stuff.
But I had to deal with the issues. So we had to deal with this dude who got two text messages after he told us to text him and he didn’t update his credit card. And I started realizing, after we started learning all about the do not call list, and the do not text list, it’s just crazy. Basically we brought on all these lawyers and companies and all this crap in the last, all day today, which is crazy. But we found out, it’s interesting, these texts, there’s 150,000 known people, if they get a text message from you they will file lawsuits. That’s all they do.
So as soon as they get a text once, they get blocked across all these things. So it’s like we’re tapping on API’s, so we pull out all these known complainers and stuff, but it’s insane. So all these guys do is go out there and sign up for things and wait for you to text them. That’s it. This is a real thing. You hear about this, I always thought there’s no way that people are that evil. But they are, this is a real thing. It’s happening, it’s happening to me right now. So now we gotta fight this thing, it’s just nuts. Time, energy and money wasted for some moron who’s going out and looking for lawsuits. That’s it, it’s crazy.
So there was number one, then I deal with number two. Some of our lawyers came in and the lawyer basically, this deal from three years ago and I haven’t heard from him in over a year, the lawyer is just shocked. I can’t believe we’re hearing from him, it’s just insane. And sat down with me and went through everything again. “You guys are in the right. 100% in the right. My authority as your lawyer is we need to go and just destroy this person and put him out of his misery.” He said it nicer than that, but not much.
But I was just like, we’re in the meeting and everything and I think it was Dave or Brent, or someone on my team asked me, “What does your gut tell you, Russell?” and I was like, “My gut tells me I just need to do whatever it takes to make this go away.” I listen to my gut a lot, because I don’t think it’s my gut, it’s other stuff.
Anyway, I told my lawyer that, and it’s funny because I had this really rare chance to learn something today, something I teach my kids all the time. My kids, we get in these arguments with each other, especially my 7 year old and my 12 year old. They’ll get in these arguments about things and the older one is so mad because they’re trying to prove that they’re right to the younger one. I’m like, “It doesn’t matter, just stop. It doesn’t matter that you’re right or wrong, just stop fighting, please. Just stop fighting.” “But he’s wrong.” “It doesn’t matter, it does not matter who’s right and who’s wrong. It does not matter at all.”
And I try to teach that to my kids over and over again, just walk away, let it go. It does not matter. It’s funny because after we got done with the lawyer meeting and stuff and I wrote this person back and just said, “Hey, here’s the lawyer, you can figure all this stuff out.” And that person wrote back and said, “Please get on a call.” And I was like, I don’t want to get on this call. I just don’t. I don’t want to get this call.
So for me, I kneeled down and I prayed and I was just like, “What should I do.” Asking for help because I knew that I wanted to be like my 12 year old and be like, “No, you’re freaking wrong.” And yell at this person, but I knew that wouldn’t solve anything and just hurt everything. So I prayed for humility and prayed to know what to do and how to do it. I got all this frustration and anger so I picked up the phone and called this person.
I listened to the person, who basically starts yelling at me, telling me all these things that he thinks I’ve done wrong. At every point I just want to fight back and be like, “This is not true, that is not true. I’ve proved that’s not true.” And everything. But I sat there and bit my tongue. I was just praying in my head, “Let me know what to do, how to handle this and what to do.” Just sitting there and sitting there, taking it and taking it and finally just, “Dude, what do you want? What’s the real story, just tell me.” And we talked about it and I think we figured out a way to solve it. And it sucks because like my little kids…legally, people get justice with lawyers, justice needs to be served, you were in the right here, this is not your fault.
And I’m looking at this from another angle, saying, there’s two laws, there’s justice and there’s mercy, these two things. Legally, we always want justice for everything. There’s the other side of mercy. I don’t know about you, but there’s things in my life where I make mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. Made way too many mistakes to brag about, especially on a public form like this.
But there’s times in my life when I needed mercy from people and from things. There’s times when mercy came through to me and it saved me and helped me. In my physical life and spiritual life, in different things like that, and I’m just grateful for the times when I was extended mercy. And I think for me at the time, you don’t have to have perfect justice, extend mercy here and it’ll make everything better. I don’t know if that’s always the case, but definitely was the case for me today.
So that was the first two issues. And then, I’m all excited for my kids wrestling match tonight. This all happened by 3 today, then I had to leave to go the wrestling match. So I go to the wrestling match, we get there and I’m working with my kids because last week they kind of got beat up a little bit at the tournaments. So all weekend long I worked with them in the wrestling room at our house and got them better and better and better.
I got there and my first, Dallin my oldest of my twins was first match, he wrestled the perfect match, it was so awesome. All the stuff we worked on this weekend he was doing, it was really neat, really special to see that. He won and it was just so exciting.
And then Bowen had the next match, but it wasn’t until the end of the night. So he’s warming up and goofing off and having fun and Dallin is doing the same thing and then Brandii, who is our nanny, she brought all of our kids, and luckily this turned out to be a huge blessing. She brought the kids to the wrestling match, which was kind of stressful because I’m with Norah, holding little baby Norah and the other ones are running around and all sorts of crazy stuff.
And then Bowen is getting closer to warming up, so I gave all the kids back to Brandii and went to the other side of the mat and start getting Bowen all warmed up and then Dallin is there goofing around because he’s between his match, having fun and he goes over to the bleachers, the side of the bleachers and he saw someone jumping up doing box jumps on this ledge. There’s like a metal strip across this ledge, and he sees them doing box jumps and he’s like, “I’m going to do it.” Because he’s kind of bored, sitting around. So he goes to jump and do a box jump and misses it, hits right below his knee. I’ll actually show you guys this.
Those of you who are watching, this is like, parental discretion advised, this is kind of freaky. But if you’re listening you can’t see them, but he hits his leg and is like, “Ooh, that hurt but I’m fine.” But I look at him and I’m like, “Dude, you are not fine.” It was the deepest cut I have ever seen in my life. You can see this here, that’s his knee. It looks like you can see the bone. If you’re listening you can’t see this. I want to throw up just looking, it’s like the deepest cut ever. I looked down and I was just like, “Oh my gosh. You can see all the way to the bone with this cut. It is huge.”
And then there’s blood pouring everywhere, all over the mats, all over the thing. I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” I’m just going to keep showing pictures while I’m doing this. I’m like, I don’t know what to do or even how to handle this. This is….So I’m kind of pulling him out of the wrestling room, and trying to warm up Bowen on the side of the mat, now I’m pulling Dallin out and there’s blood just oozing everywhere. My wife’s not there, I don’t know what to do, there’s no one, I don’t know what to do.
I come out in the hallway, and luckily the wrestling coach, he’s got some kind of medical background, I’m not sure exactly, he was there. I’m like, “I need help.” He’s like, “Oh my gosh. Yes, put him down.” So he puts him down, here’s some more pictures. Luckily, because I was kind of in shock I didn’t know what to do, so he goes and gets someone to go grab some gauze and they wrap the knee up. I was like, “We gotta take him to the ER, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to miss Bowen’s match. Bowen’s been training.” Ugh, look how deep that is.
So anyway, the coach is there and helps me wrap this thing up and then I ran over to Brandii, our nanny, who is over there….Here’s my little buddy, laying in the hospital bed, smiling during the surgery. There’s him all stitched up at the end there. Anyway, he’s laying there, and I grab Brandii, who is our nanny and said, “Dallin just cut his leg open and he’s gotta go to the ER.” So she grabs all the kids and comes back and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” Bowen’s trying to warm up and he’s all frazzled because of that.
So me and the coach pick up Dallin and run him out to the car, which is like at least half a mile. We get in the car and Brandii loads up all of our kids plus her kids and heads back to the ER. I run back in and I’m trying to…oh, I don’t have our medical cards on me, of course, because that’s how I roll. So I’m trying to find medical stuff to send with him and Bowen’s warming up for his match and he’s all frazzled because he saw his brother bleeding to death, he’s sure his brother’s going to die, his twin brother’s about to die.
So then I’m trying to keep him focused, get him warmed up, and he goes out there and wrestles, and poor little dude. He’s trying so hard, and he’s so much better, but he got thrown in the first 10 seconds and pinned. And he comes off just crying his eyes out and I think he’s more upset about his brother, but just all the emotions of that, they’re just little dudes right now.
But oh, it was emotional. I was trying to find Dallin’s backpack is in some bleachers, and then Bowen, getting all out the door and then racing over to my car and speeding off to get to the hospital. But I remember when we were leaving all the kids were like, “We’re starving, we’re starving.” At the wrestling match. I’m like, my kids haven’t eaten yet. It’s like 6:00, 6:30 at night. I’m racing to the hospital and I run off to a fast food restaurant, this is a crazy story, I’m sorry. I got no one to talk to, my wife’s gone tonight, so hopefully you guys don’t mind.
So I race to the fast food restaurant and I order food, I’m going through the drive thru and I’m like, “I need ten hamburgers, ten drinks and a kids meal because I got a little baby daughter.” So they pull me through and the lady’s like, “Hey, the manager wants to see if you want ten custard ice cream things.” I’m like, “You know what, yes. That’d be awesome.” So we had this car full of hamburgers, ice cream and water for me and Bowen. We’re racing back to the ER, we get there and we find Brandii with all the kids and I give her the keys and I’m like, “go feed the kids in the car.” And then I run in and Dallin’s in there and he’s about to start surgery to get his knee all cleaned up. Poor little dude.
The cut was so big and they had to get a needle to numb, they probably shot him, I would say conservatively probably about 30 different shots, he’s just screaming, he was so tough. They stitched him all up and it was just forever. Brandii took the kids home, they went home and did homework, and got them all to bed, they did homework until almost 11 and went to bed. That’s been the last 24 hours of my life.
So it’s been crazy. I just wanted to tell you guys that, it was a fun story. Just some of the things, some of the lessons of today I learned. Number one, whenever you are moving towards things that are good, the adversary or whatever you want to call it, is going to fight against you. That’s okay, it’s normal, it’s going to happen. I know a lot of listeners are people who believe in God, who think about God and if you’re not, I just recommend remembering there’s a reason why these things happen. I believe it’s to get us to remember God. So first off, remember God.
Number two, there are evil people in this world, frivolous people who are just out there to steal money. And they’re there, and the bigger you get, the bigger of a target you’ll become. So just be aware of people and protect yourself in any ways you can. We’re trying to put up a whole new line of defenses for us, so know that.
Number three, know that sometimes, if you want to have mercy, if you want people to have mercy on you sometimes in life, don’t always fight for justice in every situation. Be okay letting somebody else, just be okay giving somebody else mercy sometimes. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. Even if it’s not, even if it doesn’t give you justice. It may hurt, it may suck, but if you ever want to receive mercy in your life, it’s worth it to give to other people. It’s important.
The last one, I don’t know what the moral of the story of the last one is, other than it was just a lot of stuff. That’s about it. Anyway, I hope that helps you guys, I hope you learned something, I hope you got something. If not, don’t worry about it. If you did, though, please share this video or this podcast with somebody you love and care about. I appreciate you listening, it’s a huge honor to have you guys listening to this stuff that we share and I hope that it helps. That’s all I got for tonight. Thanks you guys, appreciate you all, have an amazing night, we’ll see you guys all again tomorrow. Bye.
A podcast from Russell and Todd in a private plane.
On this special private plane episode Russell and Clickfunnels co-founder, Todd Dickerson, rant about troubles they’ve had with different platforms, most recently iTunes. Here are some of the interesting things you will hear on this episode:
So listen here to find out why it’s important to have a back up plan when it comes to social media platforms, as well as merchant accounts.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we are taking, this whole thing is happening on a private plane with Todd Dickerson.
Todd: Well, it’s a little bumpy right now.
Russell: Alright, so right now we’re on a private plane and I want to show you guys the moon out here. Now we’re in the middle of a cloud. I don’t know if you can see this.
Todd: Busting through the clouds.
Russell: So those who are watching this, if you’re listening you can’t see it, but we’re on a private plane, we’re at, I don’t know how many feet in the air. We just left Atlanta, Georgia. Not Atlanta, we left Cherokee county, at the airport, which is kind of cool. We were supposed to be…we were really excited because this flight there was supposed to be a beautiful girl right there, and a beautiful girl right there and then Todd right there. But our beautiful ladies, aka our wives are not here. Todd’s daughter got sick the last two or three days so his wife’s like, “I can’t make it.” And then my wife’s like, “Well if she’s not going, I’m not going.” So now we’re on a romantic trip together without our wives because we already booked a plane.
Todd: So we’re going anyway, it’s going to be fun.
Russell: It’s going to be so awesome. Oh, check it out, here’s the moon. There’s the moon shot. Yeah, there’s the moon. So for those who are watching this, there’s a picture of the moon. It’s so cool. For those of you guys who are listening, you have no idea what we’re seeing, you are totally missing out. Go to marketingsecrets.com and you can watch the video version as well.
Anyway, man this plane is really bumpy. Bumpier than I thought. We’re above the clouds now, so we’re legit. Alright for those of you guys who don’t know Todd yet, you need to know him. He is the brains behind Clickfunnels. He’s the one who built it all initially and he lives in Atlanta, Georgia. We’ve been trying to get him to move to Boise now for like 6 years. But he told me no. So finally, I feel bad, he comes to Boise like every quarter.
Todd: Every few months.
Russell: This is the first time I’ve come to Atlanta to hang out with him and see his house. I had a chance to hang out with him in his home and his family is amazing. Tell them all about how cool you are.
Todd: Okay.
Russell: Anyway, right now we’re actually heading down to a conference, St Petersburg airport.
Todd: Clear water beach.
Russell: An email marketing conference, a mastermind thing.
Todd: It’s top secret. We’re not allowed to say where it was.
Russell: We can’t talk about it. Well, by the time this comes out, you can’t yell at me anyway. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re putting this along so we can show you guys what’s happening. But it’s kind of fun. And check it out, oh it looks so cool.
Anyway, I don’t exactly what we’re going to talk about. There’s so many things we can talk about when we’re like, “We’re on the plane, let’s do a podcast.” I have one thing I want to rant about and while I’m ranting I’m going to let Todd rant about whatever he wants. Because I want you guys to get to know him better.
So my rant today, right now I’m recording my podcast. Some of you guys know I’ve been a podcast, Marketing In Your Car first, and…… I just popped my ears, that’s why I’m doing weird stuff….So we launched that podcast and ran it for almost 6 years, every single day in my car podcasting, podcasting. Putting in the time, the effort, the work. We built a big following, and then about a year ago we rebranded it as Marketing Secrets. And since we’ve rebranded we have 3.5 million downloads, we’ve been in the top ten business podcasts for the entire year, our video podcast is the number one, not only in the business category, our video podcast is the number one video podcast in all of iTunes. So you’d think that iTunes should like us.
Todd: Yeah, you’d think so.
Russell: But apparently, ten days ago they decided they didn’t like us. What they did is they shut down, basically, if you’re subscribed to our podcast you continue to get our stuff, but nobody new can subscribe. We’ve been appealing to them, writing to them and they’re like, “Sorry.” And we’re like, “Why are we kicked out?” they’re like, “You’re just kicked out.” Well, why? They won’t tell us why, they just said, “You’re out.” And it reminded me about something I wanted to talk to you guys about because it’s very, very important. And it’s never, never, never trust a platform. If you’re building your business on a platform, just prepare to lose it all very, very soon.
I’ve done this multiple times and now it’s happening with iTunes. I’ve lost, how many since we’ve known, how many email auto-responders?
Todd: Oh my gosh…
Russell: I’ve been kicked out of Aweber, almost a dozen times. iContact, at least 8 or 9. ActiveCampaign, Bellcheck multiple times, SendGrid multiple times and again just recently, they did it again. Facebook I’ve been kicked off at least 2 or 3 dozen times, we’ve been really good and consistent recently. Instagram kicked me off, I got back in luckily. Google kicked us off like a decade ago. We never really got back. YouTube I launched, I had one video that the headline was, “The Internet Marketing Illuminati” and they cancelled our account. It’s just crazy.
So all of us, we put all of our eggs in this basket, like Many Chat or Facebook Messenger, every time we put the eggs in, we gotta put all the eggs in this basket. The problem is if somebody doesn’t like you for whatever reason, or no reason at all, they don’t even have to tell you a reason, they can just turn you off. It is insane. You were telling me about the Amazon one today…
Todd: Oh yeah, the Amazon guy, so there was guy locally that was selling stuff online on Amazon, and he was killing it and doing great. He ordered a huge new pallet of stuff from China, had it all shipped over and got here. While it was on the way over, Amazon decided to D-List his product. They didn’t like the name of one of the products, they thought it was too close to another name of something else, D-Listed the product completely. His entire revenue stream disappeared overnight. Luckily, he had been talking to one of our other guys, support agents about funnels, so he started his funnels up, but he was completely dependent on Amazon. Lost a business, he had 5 employees, all of his employees are looking for what they’ll be doing next. He’s struggling to get things going and it’s all because he was 100% reliant on Amazon.
It doesn’t mean that it can’t be a side channel that’s awesome for sales, but you cannot have it be a primary thing. Not Amazon, not Google, not Facebook, nothing.
Russell: It’s crazy. So I just wanted to re-emphasize this to all of you guys. If you’re building your business 100% on Facebook, I got bad news for you, Zuckerberg doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t. “But Russell, I’m paying $1000 a day in Facebook ads.” He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care even a little bit. We’re spending insane amounts of money and they don’t care. They don’t care about you, about me, about any of us. All they care about is their customers, making sure the platform’s happy. And guess who their shareholders and platform doesn’t like? People like us. So guys, you just have to be aware of that.
iTunes apparently, now that I know, they don’t like people like me. I don’t know why, I just kind of, added a ton of publicity to their platform, added thousands of viewers, millions of downloads, and they just one day out of the blue, “Oh, bye.” With no rhyme or…it’s crazy to me.
Todd: The top guy won’t even tell you why.
Russell: Yeah, the escalated it to the highest guy in support, he’s like, “Yep, we cancelled your account.” I’m like, “Why?” He’s like, “This ticket has now been closed.” You won’t even tell me why? I don’t know what to do.
So a couple of things. Same thing with merchant accounts. I almost went bankrupt before. I had 14 merchant accounts at one bank and all of them got shut down the same day. So 1 is a very, very scary number in business and in marketing. So always think about having multiple things, having multiple ways you are collecting money or are able to collect money. Making sure you have customers from different platforms, make sure the way you message your customers, there’s multiple platforms.
In fact, can we talk about this right now, or is this top secret?
Todd: It’s a little top secret still.
Russell: It’s still top secret.
Todd: We can’t talk about this part of it, but what he’s leaning towards is, what we already do in Actionetics on some levels, is being able to communicate on multiple channels, multiple modalities and stuff. But there’s definitely nice stuff that’s going to be coming in the near future.
Russell: I don’t want everyone, again, if you relying 100% on email, you could be in trouble. It’s hurt me multiple times. I think, I would say conservatively about 20 times I’ve lost my email service provider. And I’m not an aggressive marketer, maybe I’m aggressive. I may be aggressive but I’m not unethical. I follow the rules of everything. So it’s just kind of crazy.
So a lot of things we’ll do, if you were at last year’s Funnel Hacking Live we talked about the big benefit of using Actionetics, you can plug in your other SMTP and if SendGrid shuts you down, you plug in the new one, but you still keep your accounts. We’re trying to be a platform that’s not shutting our members down, so you have access, so if something bad happens you can plug in to other things.
Todd: it’s the new thing with custom domains, I’m not sure….now with Actionetics you’re able to have your own custom domain for everything. So link tracking goes through a custom domain, your unsubscribes go through a custom domain. Everything goes through a custom domain so you don’t have any relationship to any other people on the platform or to us. So if you get in trouble or someone else on the network gets in trouble it doesn’t affect anyone else. Which is, that’s not the case, and the reason why Aweber won’t let you import people into their platform, it’s because if you import people and spam them, then it hurts everyone on Aweber. That’s no longer going to be the case on the whole Actionetics platform. You are super isolated, so it’s only going to affect you if you cause a problem. And if another person on the network causes a problem it’s only going to affect them.
Same thing with image hosting and everything, it’s all going to be on your own custom domains now, which is actually already live. So if you haven’t set that up, go set up a custom domain, we’re giving everyone free custom domains.
Russell: It’s awesome. We’re trying to figure out ways to make it so that, we care about you guys as customers, we want to protect your businesses, so we’re trying to make Clickfunnels easier to use. So you can add in multiple SMP, multiple ways to collect money, multiple ways to message us. You’re not 100% relying on email. There’s just a lot of cool things that are coming. I can’t tell them about…..
I always tell people stuff before we’re ready and Todd yells at me, so I’m going to be careful. But that’s where we’re going and I just want to re-emphasize for you guys. If you are relying on one platform, if Zuckerberg is the way your entire business runs, now is the time to diversify. Don’t diversify in 6 months from now, or a year from now. My guess is that windows not going to be that long.
About a year and a half ago when Facebook started shutting our accounts down, I was like, “Lose Facebook, Facebooks over.” For some reason they loosened back up. They had a tight grip on people, but they loosened back up. But you know it’s going to come back again, you saw what Google did. I have friends who are making millions and millions of dollars a month, who when Google put the chokehold out, they never recovered. They’re doing, working at McDonalds, I don’t know where. But they’re not doing their business anymore.
So if you want to be around in the long term it’s very important to understand that. I still think you should start with a platform, start with Facebook or whatever that is and go there, but be very aware, as soon as that’s working, it’s like now you need to add a second source, so as soon as one disappears….or I need two merchant accounts, in two separate banks. I need to be able to collect money just in case one dries up or goes away. Make sure multiple auto-responders, SMTP, all those things are very, very important, just don’t rely on a platform. The platform will screw you over. They do not care about you or me, they only care about themselves and their customers. They think for any reason, because of something we produce it effects the experience of the customer, gone.
Todd: Or the shareholder.
Russell: Or the shareholder.
Todd: That’s the reason why we’re not VC by the way. Same type of thing.
Russell: The reason why we love you guys, we’re not taking VC money because we want to be able to protect you guys. But it’s crazy, I have no idea. I talked about God in my last podcast, maybe that was why. I don’t know. It’s crazy.
In YouTube, we were talking about….who’s that famous dude who lost his YouTube again?
Todd: Oh, there’s PewdiePie or whatever, there was 50 million followers. I mean to be fair, there were some things that he shouldn’t have said, but instantly they shut down his business, he had dozens of employees, everyone out of work, completely shut down this entire media empire more or less, with the flip of a switch.
Russell: Cutie Pie?
Todd: PewdiePie
Russell: PewdiePie! So if you guys know PewdiePie, he got screwed by this as well, it’s crazy. And if you look at it there’s stuff on YouTube that’s so super offensive. I don’t even know what he said, but he said something.
Todd: He said something offensive, it was probably really bad.
Russell: It was probably really bad, yeah. But nevertheless they just crushed him like a grape, and they don’t care. You’re like, “But dude. I put in 5 million dollars a year in your platform.” But “We don’t care about you.” That’s what happened with Google. I remember when Google slapped everybody, everyone’s so shocked like, “I spend a hundred grand a month on Google ads.” They’re like, “You are one of our smallest clients.”
Todd: It’s a blib. They won’t even talk to you if you’re spending that.
Russell: It’s a lot of money to us, but to them, they don’t even care. They’re just angry that you interrupted the customer experience. So it’s just something to be very, very, very aware of.
Todd: Yeah, if you’re selling on Amazon, if you’re building your business on any of these platforms, that’s fine, but you need to also be expanding out. Building your customer list, building your email list, building your different chat lists, building your different communication channels with this. Building an actual business where you’re able to keep things going if Amazon decides to shut you off tomorrow. Because it will happen, it has happened to plenty of people.
Russell: So there is your warning. Ye have been warned. Thus sayeth Clickfunnels. Be careful because they will screw you over.
Okay, one last thing for this podcast. Todd’s working on tons of new stuff, we can’t talk about it, but what are you most excited about with the new stuff in Clickfunnels coming out?
Todd: I’m most excited about this thing that I can’t tell you about yet.
Russell: Sorry! It’s so awesome though. He showed me all the screenshots today.
Todd: So yeah, there’s the potential to basically 2x probably the results that you’re getting from different leads that are coming in on the front door from a communication perspective. Double open rates, double click rates, that kind of thing on what you’re currently seeing on your primary channel of communication.
Russell: That’s like being super, low balling. Double is….
Todd: Super generic low balling but it’s way more than that.
Russell: Yeah, it really is probably.
Todd: Yeah, it really is probably way more than that. And there’s also some cool things with payment processing that we’re beta testing right now that should literally instantly double mobile conversions.
Russell: That one we can talk about?
Todd: Yeah, I mean we can talk about that.
Russell: You can be in on this one.
Todd: So ApplePay, AndroidPay and Paypal all on one push to order. So the results we’re seeing preliminary at least, on the apple based stuff is literally, you go online, you click add apple pay to your thing, you press your thumb on it, and it’s instant. Everything works with upsells, with OTO’s, down sells, one click ad sales.
Russell: So imagine on your mobile, you’re on your phone and someone comes with a free plus shipping offer and they buy, does ApplePay pop up on their phone?
Todd: They only literally have to order once. They order on your primary order form, one time. Just like you, instead of typing in an order number, we have their thumbprint. Boom, it’s ordered. And then on an upsell they can just click one button, just like you would if they had to put in a credit card number. We can charge them, do the whole process, do everything we need to do. Same thing for Android. That’s the other sexy part that just recently came out. Brand new Android, they’re calling it like Google Pay or something like that, but we’ll be also supporting that as well. So you’ll be able to have Apple and Android, which for the longest time, most of the other platforms out there, they still have, if they do support it, it’s only Apple.
Russell: So that’s crazy. For those who are selling stuff mobile-y, it’s going to make your mobile experience so insanely good. People, I don’t know about you, I never buy things on my phone because I hate trying to type my credit card with my thumb. So what I do, I always email myself the link and then sometimes I buy stuff and sometimes I don’t because at that point I forget about it, whereas this is now like, oh…and they click their little thumbprint and it dings their card and then upsell, upsell, upsell, boom, fulfillment.
I’m also going to prophecy, I don’t know if I should prophecy, it’s kind of sacreligious. I don’t want to get shot down in this plane. I’m going to forecast, is that a better word? I’m going to forecast the future of where things are going. I was telling Steven this the other day. You know how we always design websites for desktops, usually wide, using multiple columns and stuff like that, mark my word, the future of where website design is going, is in single column, narrow width pages. If you look at Dollar Shave Club’s order form, this is the best example. You go to the page and the order form is like this wide going down the middle, and the fields are all centered and very, very clear, and it works really good mobile-y.
But I think that’s going to be the future of where even desktop is all designed. That’s my forecast, I’m guessing. So you’ll start seeing, you’ll notice Clickfunnels, one of our order pages right now is a lot more simple. That, I think that’s where future things are going to be.
Todd: It needs to be sized down properly, to do that. And you can easily, in the Clickfunnels editor, you can easily do that. Just jump into mobile mode, build it first in mobile mode, click desktop and you’ll see it in both modes. That’s the great thing about it. You literally only have to design it once. You might change some font sizes or show some images on desktop that you don’t show on mobile, stuff like that, that you can customize. But in reality you can do it first on mobile very easily.
Russell: I think people read more on mobile than videos, don’t you?
Todd: Yeah.
Russell: When I’m looking, I never push play on a video on mobile, like a sales video, I’d rather always read. Which is why I also think like a blend of video plus text is going to be more and more important. I look at a lot of our stuff now and it’s like here’s the video of me pitching it and then below there’s the copy of me pitching it. Because a lot of video I’ll see the play button, but I’ll, typically you’re in the bathroom or something and it’s awkward. This is my phone hand….Just kidding.
Anyway, there’s some forecasts and some ideas. But that’s what we got for you guys. So I hope you guys have enjoyed the flight. We’re probably half way to our destination. All you need to remember is, first off, don’t rely on one platform for anything. Your advertizing, your messaging to your customers, your merchanting, the only one platform you should be relying on 100% is Clickfunnels because we love you guys.
Todd: We’re flexible with everything too. We allow you plug in other platforms. We allow you to plug in every other platform out there. That’s why we built a way for you to….
Russell: We’re the only ones that love you enough that you should just focus on us. But then like I said, our focus, one big thing that we’re moving forward, is building in all the back ends, so you can plug in backups for stuff, you have multiple ways to message people outside of just email, in case email gets shutdown. Multiple merchant accounts in case your merchant accounts get shut down. All those kind of things. But don’t forget on your ad side, on your podcast side, all those things. My podcast downloads have dropped because I’m no longer listed, which drives me nuts. And nobody can subscribe to my podcast now. So now I gotta do work, anyway it’s just a new annoyance happening.
And there’s always a work-around. If you get your Facebook account shut down, don’t just walk away and be like, “Apparently I broke their terms…” This is the other thing that drives me crazy. I remember, you’ve probably heard us talk about SEO days, people were like, who were anti-SEO were like, “Well, we don’t want to do this because it’s against Google’s terms of service.” And it’s like, “Their terms of service…they’re coming to your website and spidering you. You can do whatever you want on your website.” It’s this weird thing.
So same thing, people getting their Facebook account shutdown are like, “It’s over. I’m done. This is not fair.” No, you don’t understand. This is your business, this is war. If they’re coming in and shutting you down, you need to fight back and get back in and keep coming back and coming back. Don’t just get knocked down and be like, “Ugh, I’m dead.” If that had happened to us, we would have lost our business decades ago. But we’re fighters so we get back up and keep going.
So you’ll see my podcast back, very, very soon. It’s annoying because I will lose all of my pre….anyway, we’ll leave it at that. It’s all fun games. When all is said and done, it doesn’t really matter. We’re trying to change the world and these guys get in our way. The platform will get in your way, and try to keep you from that. So just ignore them and keep moving forward. They shut you down, come back, make some tweaks, changes and keep going on and keep serving your people because they’re there, it matters, it’s worth it. Anything else? Any final words?
Todd: See you on the ground.
Russell: See you guys. Bye everybody.
Interesting thoughts I had on my drive home from Salt Lake City.
On this episode Russell relates following God’s will to following the will of the market in business. Here are some of the enlightening things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out how Russell is able to relate business marketing to God.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are all having an amazing day today. Whoa, I’m juggling my phone as I get in the car. Crazy day. We are just leaving, I was about to leave the house today and I walked out and Norah was outside on the trampolines jumping.
Some of you guys heard my crazy stories. We had a big side yard that was kind of a big empty weed field. So we decided this year to go a little crazy. So we put in a football/soccer field, a volleyball court, basketball court, baseball and a track that wraps the whole thing and then 9 underground trampolines. And they got the 9 underground trampolines up this weekend while we were gone. So we spent all night last night when we got home jumping and then this morning, I was about to leave and I could hear little giggles outside and I went outside and Norah was jumping.
It’s a little bit cold out here, but I went and jumped for the last little bit. Now I’m heading out so I’m buckling up in my car and we are ready to rock and roll. It’s funny, we were gone this week. We went and drove to Burley where my in-laws live and we dropped off our kids and from there we drove down to Salt Lake because I had a meeting that I’ll tell you guys about here in a second.
But it’s funny, on the way home we went camping and stuff like that, so I haven’t shaved in two days. So my face was all prickly, you know what I mean. I was picking up Norah yesterday and her curly hair is like Velcro on my beard. I tried for two days and I just hated it, so I just shaved it this morning. I’m like, ah, I feel so much better.
But I hate it because I’ve been watching, we’ve been studying Dollar Shave Club and Dollar Beard Club’s off-boarding process. In fact, I wrote about it in Funnel university this month. And I don’t know what it is, all the beard guys just seem cooler and part of me is like I wanna be cool like the beard guys but I just can’t. Two days and I gave up, it was horrible. So I’ll never be as cool as the beard guys. But I will give them credit, they are definitely cooler than us shaved guys. Anyway, hopefully someday I’ll become a man and be able to grow one out. That day is not today.
Anyway, so I want to share something today, and some of you might be thinking, Russell this is a marketing podcast why are you talking about God? Because he has to do with everything, it’s really important. And the lesson I learned this weekend has to do with God, but it also then relates back to you guys and your market, so I think it’s really, really important.
So I was in Utah and I had a meeting with someone who is one of the top leaders in my church, the Mormon church. And we believe in our church that there’s a prophet and his 12 apostles, similar to how when Christ was on Earth. And my meeting was with one of the twelve apostles, which was really a huge honor, and scary and exciting and all those things all wrapped into one. And I had a chance to meet with him.
So this whole week prior to leading up to it, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about just life and how things work and then obviously meeting with him and then afterwards, it was a really neat reflection in time. And there was something that came out, I mean, there was a lot of stuff I wish I could share in the context of this podcast, but it’s probably not appropriate or the right spot, so I won’t. But there was one thing that just kept ringing through my head that I wanted to share because I think it’s important and it does relate back to marketing. So there you go. Is it I alright if I relate it back to marketing, if I talk about God for a few minutes? Hopefully that’s okay.
So it’s interesting, if you look at the world, what the world tries to do is that they see, I don’t want to get political because I don’t care about politics at all, so I’m not going to get political. But I see this mostly, it’s amplified in politics, where it’s like these are the agenda items that people either believe this or believe this and they fight back and forth, who’s right and who’s wrong, and all that stuff. And it’s kind of crazy.
And it’s been interesting, in my life, and I’m not perfect in this by any stretch, this is what I aspire to be, when I look at an issue, when I look at something it shouldn’t be what do I believe. What does Russell believe on this topic? It should be, okay I believe in a God, so what does God actually believe on this topic? And then my job as a human here is not to try to convince God that, “No, no, no, you’re wrong.” Because he’s not.
So my goal is to look at what he believes on the topic and then bend my will towards that. Say, okay this is what he believes therefore this is what I believe. That’s how it should be, if you do believe in an all powerful creator who created the heavens and the earth and everything. I think we should bend our will towards him. This is what he thinks, therefore this is what I think, on any topic.
I think that’s important as we’re trying to set up our belief’s. What we’re for and what we’re against. It should be less of, this is my opinion, this is what I think is right, this is what I studied, what I read. It should be like, what does God actually think and then sit back and pray and find out what he believes and then be like cool. I will align my will with yours. I will align with that because that’s what you believe.
So I was thinking about that, again, something I probably wouldn’t normally share inside the podcast, but I started thinking about this from the business standpoint too because there’s always correlations between all things. And it’s funny because a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with, it’s interesting what they do. They have an idea, “This is a product I want to create. It’s the greatest thing in the world. It’s going to change mankind. I want to charge this price for it, this is how I want to deliver it.” And they have all these things that they want to do because it’s their idea. It’s their baby.
And they go out there and they put it on the market and the market crushes it and it’s like, that idea sucks. Or that price point is not right. Or whatever it is, the market goes and does it’s thing. And the market in this situation is kind of like God. The market doesn’t care who you are, not that God, God does care. But the market doesn’t care who you are. The market doesn’t care how good your ideas are.
The market is what it is. If you put your thing out there and it will tell you, that idea sucked. Or that idea is amazing. Or whatever the thing in between there is. And our job as entrepreneurs, is not to try to convince the market that our idea is the best, our job is to find out what does the market actually want and then align our will with that.
And when you do that, that’s when things explode. That’s why when we test funnels, we’ll test and be like, oh the market said no. And we try again and we test and tweak the messaging and the pricing, we keep moving things around until we figure out what does the market actually want? How much do they want to spend for this? What’s the price point? What do they actually want? Do they even want this product? A lot of my ideas they didn’t want. As great of an idea as I thought they were, the market did not care about it. And the market is the only thing that actually matters.
So I always tell people, it drives me crazy people in my coaching programs, Facebook groups, and everything will come in and be like, “What’s your opinion on this?” and I’m like, “Dude, don’t take my opinion on it. I don’t even trust my opinion on my own stuff. I let the market decide. I create the thing the best I know how to do, based on what I have seen the market respond to in the past. I make the thing and then I send some traffic to it and I let the market vote. And I don’t let the market vote through quizzes or surveys or things like that. Where they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I would buy that.’ The only thing that I care about is people that actually pull their wallets out of their pocket and swipe their credit card. That is how the market votes. They don’t vote with their mouth, they vote with their credit card.”
Yes, I do, for those of you watching, I do have a Clickfunnels sticker on my wallet because it is what fills my wallet full of the stuff that we need to buy.
Anyway, so that’s how it works. So for you guys, as entrepreneurs, it’s important for you to not get so caught up on your ideas and what you believe. It is important for you to figure out what the market actually wants. What they actually believe. They believe this is worth this amount of money, they believe that this is what they want to buy. You figure out what the market actually wants, and you do that you become rich. If you fight against that, you struggle. I’ve seen people go years, maybe decades and never have success because they are trying to jam their belief’s down the market’s throat. And the market doesn’t care about you, all the market wants is what it wants. So you gotta figure out what it wants and then you align your will with that. And that’s it.
So as I was thinking about that this weekend with God and our responsibility to not so much try to dictate what we believe and try to shove it down his throat. But to figure out what he believes and align our will him. It’s the same thing with the market. And when you understand that, that’s when business becomes a lot easier.
It comes back to Expert Secrets 101, like page 3 or whatever, find a hot market, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. It does not say, find a hot market, decide what you think would be awesome to create and then jam it down their throats. That is a hard business to run. Okay, it’s the opposite way. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and then give it to them. That’s it and the market will tell you. The market will tell you if you’re right. The market will tell you if you’re wrong. If you’re wrong, don’t be mad about it. Just change your approach, change the pricing, change the hook, change the angle, change the product, change the service. Create what it wants and then everything will take place that you need it to.
Okay, there you go, is that okay that we reel religion into this thing? Because even if you guys don’t believe in God, it doesn’t mean he’s not there. That’s what’s interesting. I have people, friends that are like, “I don’t believe in God, you shouldn’t talk about it.” I’m like, “Whether you believe in him or not, he’s still there.” That’s the interesting thing.
People are like, “I don’t believe this will sell.” Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter, it’s what the market believes. So let’s go find out what the truth is, and let’s align our belief’s with that. That’s in all aspects of life. So there you go.
That’s preacher Brunson preaching on. Hope you guys don’t mind. Anyway, regardless, I hope you got something out of that one and hopefully you guys understand that’s how the world works, how the market works. And when you understand that, and you align your will toward it, that’s how you grow a company. Find a hot market, ask what they want, and give it to them. Alright guys, I’m at the office, I gotta go. See you all soon. Bye everybody.
Russell’s rant about what’s keeping people from success.
On this episode Russell rants about the difference between daycare, college and coaching and why to be successful you need coaching. But to be a champion you have to put in the extra work because coaches can only take you so far. Here are some interesting things in this episode:
Listen here to find out why you need to move on from daycare, and college and jump into coaching and then put in even more effort to become a champion.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and this is an emergency impromptu podcast with angry Steven behind me. So I have to do this right now. The Software Secrets webinar is starting in less than an hour and I should be doing slides, but something just made me angry so I wanted to jump on. And you’re kind of angry too.
Steven: It actually kind of pisses me off. It’s a recurring thing.
Russell: Alright so, this is a coaching call for everybody, and owe, we’re going to queue the Marketing Secrets intro and then we’ll come back to what we’ve gotta do.
Alright welcome back, so now that we’re still angry, hopefully the intro got you pumped, I want to talk to you guys about the difference between coaching, college, and a daycare. This is very important for you to understand because some of you guys for some reason think that we run a daycare here and we don’t.
So right here actually, if you’re watching the video version, if you look out the window here, this is our office, Clickfunnels right there, there’s the daycare. So it’s right next store. There’s a little playground right there, you guys can see it. That’s the daycare.
Steven: And they cry and they scream and they’re whiny.
Russell: So the daycare, it’s really cool. The way it works is you show up there and then someone takes care of you the entire day. Like when you’re hungry, they give you food. When you’re thirsty they give you water. When you poop yourself, they wipe your butt. It’s really, really nice. It’s like what? $50 a month, $100? I don’t know how much it is. But that’s a daycare , that’s how daycare’s work.
So that’s one option of how you can get better at life, you can go to a daycare. Option number two, you go to school. Now, the thing about school is it costs a bunch of money. They don’t care about you at all. You show up and then you do your assignments or you don’t, they don’t really care and they give you an A, B, C, D or F. or if you’re in England I also found out they have an E. We don’t E’s in America, but apparently in England there’s E’s. But A, B, C, D, or F and then as long as you get a C, they don’t, C’s good enough and you get a degree. In fact, my motto in college was C’s get degrees. That’s how I passed school. As long as I got a C I could wrestle. So I literally had a 2.1 GPA, I had complete C’s all the way through, except for I got a B in, I think it was something….It was like semester one of year one. So it was a long time ago, I don’t even remember what it was.
But I got C’s, I got a degree and yay! I got a degree, whooo. And I leave with a piece of paper that’s completely useless. So we got daycare, we got school and then the third option now, is coaching. So how does coaching work? I’m a wrestler and every single day I show up to wrestling practice, my coach was there. My coach was really good. He knew what he was doing. And I show up and all the other wrestlers would show up and we’d sit and watch the coach and he’d teach us moves and we’re like, “Oh, cool. That’s a good move.” And guess what?
Some of the kids would watch the coach and they’d try the move and they didn’t do it right and they just sat there on their butts and did nothing. And then guess what? They sucked at wrestling. And the coach didn’t give them a B, or a C, or an A and it didn’t matter because they were going to put them out on the mat and they were going to get the crap kicked out of them in front of everybody. That was the reality. You don’t get an A, B or C, it’s like okay you’re about to go fight someone. This is your preparation, if you want to just crap it away, congratulations, you did that. And you’re going to get beat up in front of everybody.
Then there are people like me, I listen to coaches, I watch, I train, I ask them questions, I keep doing it, I train, I practice. When he would leave my dad would come over, my dad’s out there. When he would leave, then we’d go out to the house eat dinner and my friends would come to my house and we had a wrestling mat on my back porch, we’d wrestle on the back porch and guess what?
I became a state champ, I became an all American, I got a college scholarship, because I did more. My dad used to always tell me, “ A coach can take somebody to this level. And a coach has got a whole bunch of people he’s coaching. That entire wrestling room is all there and everyone’s getting there and the coach can get everybody to this level right here. The difference between someone who’s going to be a coach, and someone’s who’s going to be a champion, is after the coach gets you here, it’s that extra effort. That’s what makes you a champion.”
So what’s cool about marketing and sales, first off, we’re not a daycare. I’m not going to wipe your butt. I don’t freaking care if you succeed or not. That’s not on top of me. Number two, this is not college, I’m not going to be like “Congratulations, here’s a C you can go get a degree.” Because guess what? You’ve gotta go out there on your webinar or with your pride, and you gotta step out there in front of everybody and you’re getting the crap kicked out of you and if you’re getting a C, you’re going to get destroyed. I’m not giving out C’s. It’s not a college, or university. I actually care about your success.
So what we’re going to go is we’re going to have a coaching program, but we run the coaching program just like wrestling. We’re coaching a whole bunch of people the best that we know how. We know what works, but guess what? Everyone sitting in the room is hearing the exact same thing. And the difference between a champion and someone who is average is who’s going to take that extra effort. Who’s going to ask the coach other questions? Who’s going to follow up? Who’s going to practice? Who’s going to get better? Who’s going to do stuff on their own? Who’s going to go home at night, after they eat dinner, for the third practice of the day because they want to be a winner?
Those are the people who win and those are the people we coach. So right now you’re in a coaching program. So any of you guys who are in our coaching program, this is specifically towards one person who I’m yelling at, but this is an important lesson for everyone. First off, we’re not a daycare. If you want someone to wipe your butt, it’s like $100 across the street from Clickfunnels. Across, it’s not even the street, it’s like over the fence right there. They will wipe your butt and you’ll feel really good, because you gotta clean butt.
Number two, you can go to college. Boise State’s like, I don’t know, 4 or 5 miles down the road. They’ll give you C’s and you’ll feel really good. You can put it on your wall and be like, “I got a degree.” And you’re so awesome, but you’re going to go out in the real world and get the crap kicked out of you.
Or number three, you can become a champion. Show up every single day, work your butt off, work hard, and then go out and do the extra effort you need to do to be successful. The last two nights in a row, guess how late I was here at the freaking office working on my slides? 2:00 both nights in a row. “But Russell, you’re super successful, why are you still working hard?” Because champions go the extra effort.
I could have gone home. I could’ve not done this. I could’ve just slept. And we got people who are like, “Oh Russell, I worked really hard. I was up til like 8 last night.” Dude, you guys aren’t even there yet. You shouldn’t be going to bed until at least 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning til you freaking get this thing figured out. If you want to be a champion, the coaches can get you to this level. My coaching, Steven’s coaching, what we are doing, we will get you to this level but that’s the level everyone’s at. And guess what? If you’re at that level that everyone’s at you’re not going to be successful.
Champions go the extra effort. Champions do a practice afterwards. Champions go home and do another practice. Champions are thinking about it, dreaming about it, working on it, trying to perfect the art so they can become a champion. If you want to be successful in business you’ve got to do that because this is not something where we’re going to give you a C and now you’re going to make money. It doesn’t work that way. You’re going to go out there into the real world, into the marketplace, the marketplace is going to kick the crap out of you if you haven’t been prepared.
If you show up and you’re like, “Hey marketplace, I did my first webinar and nobody showed up.” It’s because your stuff’s boring because you just did the baseline and you quit. “I did the webinar, 5 people showed up and nobody bought.” First off, it’s because you did the baseline. If you want to be a champion you have to put in the extra effort from here to here. That is the extra effort you have to be to be a champ.
So to recap today. Number one if you want your butt wiped, go sign up for the daycare, it’s really cheap. And they’ll wipe your butt and it’ll feel so good. Number two, if you want to feel good about yourself, feel happy, and like kumbaya and all that crap, go to school, they’ll give you a degree. C’s get degrees, but they will not make you any money. And number three, if you want to be coached, be coachable. Come to the coaching program, listen to what they say and then do it. Don’t complain, “I can’t figure out….” Dude, there’s a thing called Google. There’s an answer to everything, you have to go that extra effort. You have to freaking do it. And you have to do it and you have to do it and you have to do it and you’re going to get beat up a lot during this practice period of time, but guess what?
If you do that and get beat up, that’s how when you step out on the real mat against really good people, that’s how you win and we’re creating winners here and that’s what we want.
So if you’re wondering, man this stuff doesn’t work for me….actually for those who are watching the video, I’m going to show you this stuff works really good. I’m going to show you, come down the hall. This is how well it works. For those champions, those who take the extra effort there, from here to here, we have them immortalized on our wall. There’s a lot of them. All of these guys here, the Two Comma Club award. All these people, these are the champions. They didn’t just go through the coaching program and stop, “Steven wasn’t as clear on how to do…”
They freaking Googled it and they asked other questions. They asked the community, and they worked hard, and they tried, and they tested, and they figured things out, and they were rewarded with a gold platinum record here, with two commas. There’s tons of them, boom.
I was showing Instagram last night, if you guys haven’t seen this yet. This month alone, the first guy came in….we filled this wall completely up, and right now if you look at this there’s 15 new one’s that came in.
Steven: It’s like 4 or 5 a week.
Russell: 15 that came in this month so far, but check this out. I came in last night and look at this, we have a whole other stack. Another 11 more. 11 +15 is 26. So we had 26 people join the Two Comma Club in the last 30 days. So what does that mean for you guys. One millionaire a day’s being made, so if you aren’t hitting it, you’re just stopping right here. You’re not doing that last little bit from there to there that is important to do. So there you go.
Steven: You gotta understand that Russell and I don’t hold the key to your success. That’s not at all how this works. It’s funny to watch different people who come in and do different coaching and stuff. It’s always easy to see, that extra little bit, that’s what keeps going. If you’re looking for external things to motivate you, it’s the wrong question already. No one needs to motivate you to do your thing. No one cares about your thing as much as you do. So you gotta be the one who’s all fiery and out there doing the thing, being a pioneer to some extent for your own success with it. Because honestly, you’re the only one who’s going to care enough to do it.
So Russell shows the framework, we’ll show how to do it, we’ll help you do things along the way as you get stuck, or whatever it is, but it’s totally up to you. You’re success, everything is gonna be riding on your back.
Russell: 100% If you don’t really want success, you just want someone to wipe your butt, go to daycare. If you don’t want success, you just want to feel good and get a degree on the wall, go to freaking college. If you want to make money, change your life, be successful, get a coach. If it’s not me, get someone else. Get a coach, freaking do everything they say, and then stop and do more. That’s it. Champions…..My dad used to tell me this all the time, “Coach only takes you to this level. Champions are made right there.”
Alright, it ran over. I gotta get back to slides. Alright you guys, appreciate you all. Thanks so much. I know I’m preaching to the choir for a lot of you guys, but for the other ones, if that stung a little bit, I’m talking to you. So thanks you guys, talk to you soon. Bye.
How we’re creating systems so that everyone can focus on their unique abilities.
On this episode Russell talks about being worth $100,000 a day in his business, but not being worth anything as an assistant wrestling coaching. He goes on to say why it’s important to focus on unique abilities. Here are some of the amazing things in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out why Russell charges $100,000 a day for business consulting, but is an assistant wrestling coach for free.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you guys have an amazing day today because I’ve got something cool to share with you. Alright everybody, I’m heading back into the office. It’s been a couple, the last two weeks have been a lot.
Some of you guys, if you’ve been watching, last week I re-wrote the webinar from the ground up and it did really well. Over a million dollars in sales in the first week, which is cool. But the coolest thing, now that asset is done and created it will be placed in different places, including the home page of Clickfunnels. And it should, next year generate a lot. Anywhere from 10 – 20 million bucks.
So it’s like, you do the work once and it pays you forever. And now I’m writing a webinar this week for our new program called Software Secrets, which is a brand new thing. It’s always, the last webinar I wrote from scratch, but the offer was similar to what I’ve done in the past. So this one, this is a brand new offer, brand new everything.
And my kids started wrestling, and I don’t know if I told you guys this already, but the first day of wrestling practice happened and I didn’t know about it. I don’t know, we just got the dates messed up. So my kids went and that night I came home and I was all excited to see them, “How was wrestling?” and they’re all in tears, “We hate wrestling. We never want to go back.” And I was like, “What? No.” So I had to call the coach and a few minutes later I called to be an assistant wrestling coach. So now everyday at 3:00, I love it, I get to go to wrestling practice with my kids.
The only problem is that this week was planned to be the Software Secrets launch week, so I was going to have a whole week to build out the webinar. The problem is that now from 3 til 6 every night I’m at wrestling. So it cuts out, plus like drive times and everything else, it cuts out about 4 ½-5 hours every day. So I really needed to get this webinar, so I’ve been late nights. I was up at the office until 2 last night. I’m going to probably be there til 2 or 3 tonight and then do the webinar tomorrow morning live.
But I think conservatively, it’s an amazing offer. It’s really insane. I would be shocked if we don’t do a million dollars during the launch week, or this week, the webinar week, you know. And then that will go on and next year it could do, who knows, anywhere from 5-10 million bucks. So you do the work once and it pays you for the next 5 years, which is cool. That’s what I love about webinars. All that effort you put into it. So it’s worth putting in the effort.
It’s funny, as I’ve been doing this and thinking about it, I had an old friend from about 15 years ago call me and to start off, just kind of catching up and then, and I respect him for this, but as a good sales person does, he wanted to sell me something, and he’s like, “yeah, I could fly out to Boise and spend a day or two with you guys and show you all the stuff that we have.” And all this stuff right, and I was just like, how do you tell your friends this.
Awkwardly I’m sitting there and I’m like, “Hey man,” I was so uncomfortable, because how do you tell your friend, someone who’s known you when you were just a punk kid? “I don’t know how to tell you this nicely, but just so you know, right now I bill out, if you were to come in for a day of consulting I bill out an 8 hour day at $100,000. So for you to come out for 2 or 3 days, the opportunity cost for me, its 2 or 3 hundred thousand dollars. So it’s really hard for me to just block out that time. I feel like such a jerk telling you that. But if you want to come out and we hang out as friends or something, I would love to see you again as friends, that’s super cool. To take 2 or 3 business days, the opportunity cost is not little.”
He was like, “What? Are you serious?” I’m like, “yeah.” It’s kind of awkward right. But that’s what we charge. You know, I saw someone the other day posting in our Facebook group like, “How come the guru’s don’t just charge $150 an hour so they can help everyone?” and it’s like, gall I wish I could. I wish there were more hours in the day. That’d be awesome. But I was like, literally I’m spending 3 days to create this webinar that will make me a million dollars in the first week. And anywhere from 5 to 10 million dollars extra, maybe more. Who knows?
So I’m spending 3 days, 3 days of focus time. And in my pocket goes 8 plus figures. $100,000 a day is actually super cheap discounted rate. You know what I mean? So I was trying to explain that, I was like, I don’t know how to say it nicely. I was like, even if you did want to pay me $100,000 a day, the first opening is probably 5 or 6 months away. My calendar is insanely booked. Anyway, so that’s kind of, that was this awkward moment. “I’m so sorry man, I just, I don’t want you to think I’m a jerk or anything, but that’s why I can’t just have you come out for 2 or 3 days to sell me something. I just can’t, I wish I could.”
So that was, there’s step one. And then so now I’m at wrestling practice with my kids and I’m sitting there and I’m spending 3 or 4 hours a day, every day, at wrestling practice, which again, I love. It’s so cool. I remember when I was this age, going to practice and my dad coming and watching and working out with me. It’s just cool. It’s been a really unique time with the twins, just such a cool thing to be able to spend time with them. Like I said, they haven’t liked wrestling, so I’m in there trying to make sure they’re liking it. I’m in there wrestling most of the time I’m drilling with them, I’m helping them and just making sure they have a good experience just so that they keep doing it. And for the next two or three years in the beginning programs, that they like it.
If they like, I just don’t want them to get hurt, or beat up, so I’m just there to make sure that they like it and teach them some moves so they start beating kids. Because if you start beating kids, then it gets fun. So I’m just like, trying to get them through this initial pain of the beginning. And I’m sitting there, I’m an assistant coach, I’m not getting paid anything obviously. And I was just like, it’s so interesting, in this area of my life, like in business, my time is worth $100,000 a day. But in wrestling my time is not worth anything. I’m not getting paid for the 3 to 4 hours a day that I’m spending, which is, I don’t want to get paid for it.
But I had this realization, over here I’m insanely valuable monetarily. Over here, I’m not. Best case scenario, if I was, even the best wrestling coaches in the world maybe, maybe clear 6 figures, probably not. Most of them probably $50-60 grand max. And these are like the best, these are the dudes like the Michael Jordan’s of the world, of the wrestling world. So it’s like, let’s just say I was at that level and I was getting paid that, I’d still be making $20 an hour, $30 an hour maybe. So for three hours it’s worth $60, $80, maybe $100 for my time. Whereas that time spent over here is worth $20 grand an hour. You’re looking at $20, 40, 60 grand for that same time, just where am I focusing at.
And as I was thinking through it I was like, that’s so fascinating how valuable I am here and not so much here. So I started thinking about us as entrepreneurs where how often do we spend our time, we have a unique ability that’s worth $100 grand a day right. To our company and to us and the people we’re serving right. But then, we go and start doing these $8 an hour jobs because it’s gotta be done, so I should be the one doing it. But you’re not worth that much there. It’s so expensive to have you spending time on $8, 10, 20 an hour jobs if you’re making $20,000 an hour doing your unique ability.
It’s been interesting, I’ve been working with Jeff Woods, from The One Thing, on building things out. One of the big things I’m focusing on, thinking through is we’re trying to re-systemize our business because it’s kind of to the point where we need to re-set and re-do all those things. And as I’m thinking through it I’m just like, I want to create the systems and my goal in these systems is to create the system so that it forces me, and forces everybody on my team to only do their unique ability. Because each of us has a unique ability where we’re worth $100,000 a day, and then we have things we’re good at where we’re worth $20 an hour.
It’s like, if I can get everyone focusing on their unique abilities where they’re worth $100 grand a day versus their non unique abilities where they’re worth $100 a day, man how much faster can we grow and can we scale and all those type of things? So that’s been my thought process.
So right now, we’re in the re-systemization of our company from now until the end of the year. After the Software Secrets launch I’m going to take, you guys will see me take a little bit of my foot off the gas, so I can recoup, restructure, get systems in place and then in January we’re going to go crazy, so it’s going to be fun.
But that’s why, I’m trying to figure out how to get everyone focusing on their unique ability and not focusing on the $100 a day jobs that they can do, and they are doing, but how do we get it so we’re all focusing on unique abilities? So for you guys who are thinking about it, what’s your unique ability? Think through that and then figure out, okay now that I know that, what are the people on my teams unique abilities and how do I create a structure where everyone is focusing 100% of their time on unique abilities? When you do that, you’ll start growing.
Dan Sullivan, at strategiccoach.com, if you guys go there he, I just bought every book on his website last week. It showed up in a huge box. Because I’m about to immerse in some Dan Sullivan, so I don’t just buy one book, I buy all of them because I love immersion. But in one of his books, it’s about unique ability, it has like a work book and everything. I haven’t read it yet, but I know it’s awesome, so check it out.
You guys, there is Garrett, and there is Scott. Those are our partner’s for Software Secrets, Lindsay, they’ve been up here for the last 2 days camping overnight with me getting everything ready for the launch tomorrow. So if you guys are watching the video you just saw Garrett, Scott and Lindsay. If not, you just saw me point in the air and didn’t see anything, if you’re just listening. So anyway, I’m going to jump in and we’re going to get this thing launched. I got 5 ½ hours before wrestling practice. After wrestling practice I’m going to come back and probably spend another 51/2 hours, so about 10 hours to get this webinar done before my body will shut down. Wish me luck.
And then tomorrow will be a million dollar day and then we’ll have an asset that’ll pay us for the rest of our lives. So this is my unique ability. So that’s what I spend my time doing. Spending my time managing, $100 a day job. Spending my time writing webinars, $100 grand a day job. So I’m focusing on my unique ability today, which will be good. So that’s all I got. Alright everybody, appreciate you all, talk to you guys soon. Bye.
I use this in every webinar, every Facebook live, every sales letter, and pretty much every time I sell anything, and I’m going to give it to you for free!
On this episode Russell talks about a closing technique he learned from the first copywriter he ever paid, that he has been using ever since. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out what technique Russell has been using for years to close.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So excited to be here with you guys today. And today you guys are learn one of my top closing techniques that I use in webinars, and sales letters, and sales videos, and Facebook lives and over and over and over again. And I might even use it in other aspects of my life as well.
Alright everybody, I hope you guys are excited today. I’m heading over to my son Aiden’s school, he’s 7 years old and today I am the mystery reader. So what happens is in about 15 minutes from now I’m supposed to sneak up to his door and I knock on the door and they open the door and I get to come in and read a book to them. And he doesn’t know it’s happening, but they’ve been giving clues out about who I was all week long. So every Friday they do this and so it’s kind of fun, so today’s my day and I’m so excited. I got my book, got some Dr. Seuss with me.
He was cute, he was like, “Dad, if you are the mystery reader today, you should bring treats.” I’m like, “Oh, what kind of treats do you want?” and he’s like, “It’d be cool to make those oranges.” Those little oranges, whatever those little mini ones are called, and they’re peeled and you put a little celery thing on top of it, so it’s like a little pumpkin. So my wife spent all day today peeling little mini oranges and putting those things in. Oh man, he’s so cute we have to do what he asks. Just kidding, kind of.
Anyway, so I’m heading there right now and I had a few minutes I wanted to jump on and just share with you guys because as you may or may not know, I re-wrote a new podcast recently. I did it first live last week after less than a day of writing and there were tons of mistakes and errors, yet it still was our highest grossing webinar of all time. So it worked good. I spent the last week re-writing it and tweaking it, I spent probably another twelve hours or so re-working on slides and getting them just so. And then did a webinar yesterday and did awesome again, so it was fun.
And in that webinar, as I do in most webinars, I did a really cool closing technique that I love, so I want to share with you guys because I think it’s useful. So the first time I ever heard this, there was a copywriter, not was, there is a copywriter, he’s the first copywriter I ever spent money on. I gave him $8000 for a sales letter back in the day for a product I never launched, that was dumb. Yeah, I never even used it. It was called, a product I was creating called, Ezine Topia. Because everyone used to call newsletters list, like email lists back then e-zines. So I was like Ezine Topia, and it was going to be this email auto-responder that didn’t use email, it would be desk top notifications, and back then that was the buzz and I thought it was going to be the next, I thought it was going be Clickfunnels. It wasn’t, just in case you’re wondering. I failed.
But in theory it was cool and I spent a lot of money. Anyway, Ezine Topia, Johan Mock wrote the copy for it, and I used to love reading his copy. And one of the closes he used one time I saw, it was really cool. It was towards the end and it said something at the very end of the sales letter like, “Whether you buy this product or not doesn’t matter to me, I’m still going to be out eating steak and dining at fine restaurants whether you buy this or not. Because this is not about me, this is about you. This is something that will change your life. It’s not going to change my life whether or not you buy, so I don’t really care. But this will change your life.”
And I remember hearing that and I was like, oh that’s so cool. So I started incorporating that in a lot of places. In my webinars, I started using it in Facebook Live, start using it just all over the place. So if you notice when I’m selling something I do it almost every time now and it’s one of my favorite techniques when I get to the end. Because at the end, people aren’t buying are like, “Oh, it’s $2,000 or $10,000 or whatever the price is. Russell is just greedy, he wants money.” Or all these things. And so I just want to state to them, I want them to know, and it’s true, it doesn’t…..
Anyway, this is how I say it, I’m going to go into character, and I’m going to pitch it as if I’m pitching it right now. So yesterday I was selling a $2,000 course where you Clickfunnels, plus Funnel Scripts, plus Traffic Secrets, plus Funnel Hacking 101 and 201. It’s an insane offer, right. I honestly think anyone who doesn’t buy it is insane.
So basically I’d go say something like this, “So before we wrap up today I just want to say something right now because I know a lot of you guys are thinking this. But this investment, this $2,000, it is not about me. Whether you make this investment or not, it will have zero impact on the quality of my life. I’m not going to eat anything different tonight for dinner, I’m not going to change the way I dress, what I drive. It literally means zero to me, I couldn’t care less. But the difference is that this purchase, this investment, this could mean everything for you. I’m not going to notice whether you buy or not. It won’t change the quality of my life at all, but if you buy it’s going to change the quality of your life. I need you guys to understand that. This is not about me, this is about you. That’s why I created this, because I want to help and I want to serve you. So that’s what you guys need to understand, that’s how this works.”
I do it a little cooler when I’m live because I’m actually live and the stuff flows better, but conceptually that’s basically what it is. I want them to understand this investment, like if they spend $2,000 or even $25,000 doesn’t change my life at all. I don’t really care. I hope they do because extra money is always nice in the bank, but it literally won’t change, I’m doing well, I’m fine. It’s not going to change anything. I’m still going to go on my daily, the way that Johan Vox said it, I’m still going to go on my daily life. I’m going to be eating steak and sushi and hitting all my financial goals with absolute certainty, so it doesn’t matter to me if you do it or not, I could care less. But it should matter to you because it literally could change your life forever, I want you guys to understand that.
This is not about me, it’s not about if Russell’s going to make some money, or if Russell is going to whatever. This is about you. This about you making a commitment and having the blueprint, the vehicle, the things you need to actually succeed with that commitment. So this is about you, not me. So put it back on them and it helps a lot.
I use it a lot and I hope that’s a tool and a technique you guys can use as well. And it’s putting the responsibility back on their shoulders. Because when people aren’t buying they’re always trying to figure it out. Different ways to take the responsibility off and one of the ones they use is, “This is just Russell trying to get rich.” No, Russell’s already rich, he doesn’t care. The $2,000 you give him, he’s not going to see any of it. Half of it will go to an affiliate, half of it will go to support staff, half of it will go to building software, it literally does nothing for me. This is about you, not about me.
And that’s the commitment that I want them to understand and I want them to make. Because when they understand that, it’s like, “Wow, this really is about me. I gotta do this.” If I don’t buy it’s not going to make that mean old Russell salesman any different. It’s a personal decision, something that’s going to affect them.
Anyway, I hope that helps. One other thing I wanted to share with you guys that I thought was interesting today. So we did the webinar, the price is double now, the offer is like 10 times better, but the price is double. And it’s interesting because the conversion, I normally close about 15% and it was closer to 10%, so we made more net money when all was said and done, but what’s interesting, the more I think about it, if you create a product where it’s not all or nothing on the webinar. So I try to sell that but usually on the webinar you don’t buy the package I offer you, you still can buy Clickfunnels, right. So that becomes a two to three hour indoctrination of how powerful it is and why they should use it and why they need it and stuff like that. And I think that that is the key.
So I’m just throwing it out there for you guys to think through. If you’re doing webinars and they’re not buying, it’s not an all or nothing. Again, if you have a software program it’s easy because it’s like, you’re selling a higher version of software, they can use the software. Maybe it’s a membership site you’re trying to sell a year access, but they can still get the membership site, then it’s not all or nothing. Then it’s just like, even if they don’t buy it, they still now are moving closer towards you and more likely to invest in the other stuff you got. Don’t think it’s all or nothing. It’s not all buying or not buying, it’s indoctrination, it’s building relationships, building cultures and all that kind of stuff too.
Alright, well I’m at school, I’m going to bounce. Thanks everybody. I hope you had a good time and remember this closing technique will work for you and it’s awesome. So there you go. Thanks everybody. Bye.
The second super power that you need to add that’s, unfortunately, invisible to the entrepreneurial eye.
On this episode Russell talks about being able to set long term goals to help you focus today and stop chasing all the shiny things that you see along the way. Here are some interesting things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out how to add another super power to your entrepreneurship.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about being an entrepreneur and sometimes it might not be good.
Alright everybody, so as you know, I love entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur; I’m obsessed with entrepreneurs. My entire goal in life is to help entrepreneurs change more people’s lives because I think that we are the only types of people that can. Because we’re the only types that are crazy enough to risk everything we have, our money, our time, our energy, our talents, the pursuit of creating something amazing that will change other people’s lives.
Some people think entrepreneurs are greedy, all they care about is money and I don’t believe that’s true. I believe some are, yeah, there’s definitely some that are. But I think that a lot of people, the entrepreneurial spark starts because of money, because of the desire for that, but I think for most of us, and you’ll find that out if you’re still in the path, as soon as you start making money it starts becoming stupid. You actually don’t care about it all because it’s really not that cool. So there you go, for those of you guys, I hate to ruin the surprise for you, but when you get there, nobody actually cares about money. It’s just the thing that you desire at first until you get it, and then you’re like, huh, that was actually not nearly as cool as I thought it was going to be.
But the cool thing is in the interim as you start doing that, you start serving people and you start seeing their lives change and you’re like, “Holy crap, that was actually awesome.” So that’s kind of the thing.
Like I said, I love entrepreneurs because they’re the people who care enough to risk life and limb, everything they got, all their time, energy, money, talents with the hope they can actually help other people. So first off, I love you guys. I’m going to stay there. Second off, I also realized that while we have super powers, kind of like the X-men. It’s funny because a lot of people talk about how entrepreneurs have ADD and it’s like this bad thing. And while I agree that most entrepreneurs have ADD and things like that, those things they are not disabilities, they’re super powers.
I remember watching the movie the X-men the first time, one of the multiple one’s in that franchise. I remember watching it and there’s these people, the X-men who they think can fly and they can disappear and do all these amazing things, but the mortal humans are like, “We need to get rid of their super powers.” And they’re trying to get rid of these super powers. And it’s just like, even some of the X-men are embarrassed of their super powers and are trying to get rid of them.
And it’s just like, you don’t understand, those super powers are what makes you amazing. Don’t get rid of those things. So I feel that way, a lot of times entrepreneurs are the people like, “I’m trying to get my kids not to have such ADD or quit fidgeting.” All these things. And it’s just like, dude, that’s why they’re great. Don’t stifle those things.
So I’m saying those things in caveat because I also understand there are some things that us entrepreneurs are not good at, especially me. Some of you guys know, if you listen to the podcast, I recently hired a consultant, Jeff Woods from The One Thing. It’s funny because when I first read that book, I kind of hated it. Because I was like, “I don’t want to focus on one thing.” And now it’s interesting as I progress in my career and my life, I realize more and more how important that, the focus on the one thing actually is. In fact, it’s essential to everything. I look at my entrepreneurs and most of them that join my inner circle. They come in 50,000 ideas and my entire focus for the year number one is to get them to kill all their babies, AKA their little businesses and focus on one.
It was just hard, it was hard for me. But I couldn’t go, I couldn’t break the 2 or 3 million dollar a year mark until I killed all my babies and focused on one. And as soon as we did, we went up from 2 or 3 million dollars a year to 70 or 80 million dollars a year, within, not a very long period of time. It’s crazy. Crazy. Within a couple of years.
So that’s one thing that I’ve learned. Entrepreneurs, we have these tendencies that cause greatness, but also tendencies that cause tend to kill us. One of them is we have a thousand businesses, we have all these babies we love and things like that. But during my consulting call this week with Jeff, from the One Thing, it was interesting, he kept telling me, “You gotta stop acting so entrepreneurial.” I’m like, “But you don’t understand. That’s my super..I’m a super entrepreneur.” And he’s like, “I know but entrepreneurship got you here. But to get to the next level, you have to start running and understanding and thinking like a business owner.”
And he keeps trying to get me to figure out what’s my goal someday. What’s this goal I’m out here for? And it’s tough because I started going through this exercise and I talked about it a couple of podcasts ago. It was weird because I realized that all my someday goals, I accomplished like 18 months ago. How weird is that? And as I’m going through this exercise, I told him “I’m really frustrated. I feel like I have perfect clarity and vision with what’s going to happen over the next 6 months, a year, maybe 18 months. After that it’s like a dark cliff.” And I remember as I told him that he kind of laughed. He was like, “Let me show you something.” Because it was a voice call, so he flipped his camera on Skype and said, “Let me draw a little picture for you.”
And so for those of you guys who are listening, I’m going to try to describe the picture, and for those watching, I’m going to try painting it with my finger. I’m in my car right now. But he said, “Look at this. This is a timeline right? So it starts at the left and you have this timeline. This is when you’re born, and this is when you wrestled, and this is when you started your business, and this is when Clickfunnels launched, and this is when Clickfunnels took off, and here you are today. This is the timeline. So we judge our time based on these landmarks that happen throughout time. Most entrepreneurs, we’re visionaries so then we look at the future we see all these possibilities.”
So if you look at this graph I’m drawing from the left to the right, it’s very linear and then it hits modern time and from here it shotguns out. So going up there’s one thing and then there’s another one. There’s like ten things shooting out from this. Almost like, it looks like a broom almost. It’s like a stick with a timeline and then it breaks off into this broom with all these possiblitites, all these things fanning out that I could go. And he says, “The problem with that, we see all these shiny objects, so we chase those things. Entrepreneurs become great when they’re able to focus on one thing. But what most entrepreneurs do moving forward, they get stuck because they can see forward 6 months. In 6 months there’s like 4 or 5 things that they could hit. These 4 or 5 shiny objects. And you go like a year and there’s more. The further out you go the harder it is to see and about 18 months it gets so….that fan of things going outward from where you are today, gets so wide it gets really hard to start seeing things. That’s why entrepreneurs are really good at seeing about 6 months to a year from now and knowing the steps to take and they’re running and doing all those kind of things, but you go past that and it’s kind of a black hole.”
“What we do with The One Thing and focus on is figuring out like a laser, instead of…..” I wish I could draw a picture so you could see it better, for those who are listening. But instead of having this thing fanning out where you’re trying to hit all these shiny object what they do is start with the someday goal. Where do you want to be someday? And getting crystal clear on that. Someday I want to be, and this is like in the future as far out as you can think. Where do you want to be, what do you want life to look like?
So I’ve spent the last 3 ½, 4 weeks trying to figure that out, which has been really, really hard. So just so you know, it’s not an easy thing. So you figure out, here’s the someday goal and from there it’s like, okay now we gotta reverse engineer timeline backwards of all the milestones we have to hit to be able to get to that one thing. So we reverse engineer. So okay, 5 years, where do I need to be in 5 years from now to be one track to hit my someday goal? And then, now I crystallized my 5 year goal. Now what do I gotta be in a year from now? And then where do I gotta be this month? This week? Today?
And then we focus on just the one thing that we’re going to accomplish that going to achieve that next landmine, not landmine. Landmines explode. The next landmark, and the next one and next one and next one. Man, it’s been a fascinating exercise. The business ones are harder to explain, but I’m going to show you really quick, one for my personal life. One of my thoughts in this exercise, what will it mean for me to be successful as a father? So I’m like, okay for me to be successful as a father, and obviously my belief’s may be different from yours. But for me, I’ve got three boys. I want my 3 boys to go on missions and I want all my 5 kids to get married in the temple. For me, that would be ultimate success as a father. So I’m looking at someday goals, is that.
So essentially it’s like, okay where do you gotta be in 5 years from now for you to be able to accomplish that? In 5 years from now, my boys who are 11 ½ almost 12, they’ll be 17. They’re a year away from preparing for their mission. At that point, where do I have to be 5 years from now, if they’re going to go on a mission by the time they’re 18? I’m like, oh my gosh, they’ve got to be able to….all these things. That’s only 5 years from now, which is crazy. Then I’m like okay, from there, 1 year from now where do you gotta be to be on track for your 5 year goal? 1 year from now they’ve gotta do…I don’t have my kids doing…. All the sudden it shifted my whole perspective. Based on that, what are you going to do a month from now, a week from now, and today? What’s the one thing I need to do with my kids today to be able to hit that goal 5 years from now? I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m not doing anything related to that.
I found the same thing in business as I looked at my someday goal, my 5 year goal, my 1 year, my week, my month, and today, I looked at my to-do list, there wasn’t a single thing on my to-do list that got me moving towards my someday goal. I was like, how fascinating is that? I have all these shiny objects, as entrepreneurs do, they’re good, they’re creating revenue and doing stuff, but none of them lead me to my someday goal. It makes me start rethinking everything, it’s so fascinating.
So what I want you guys to do, because we’re all entrepreneurs, and I don’t think about this naturally, none of us do. It’s all the different type than us. But Jeff keeps telling me, “you need to stop acting entrepreneurial. Stop acting entrepreneurial. Figure these things out. Reverse engineer, then you can go get them really, really easily. But right now, you have no focus, you’re accomplishing things, you’re making revenue but you’re never going to hit your goal because you don’t have one. You don’t have a target.” And it’s been interesting for me.
For me, I’ve been really spending, honestly almost a month now, what’s my someday goal for my business? And I’m trying to make sure, all my core people on my management team, my company, my cofounders, my partners do they have the same someday goal as I do? Because if my someday goal is to do this, and theirs is this, the direction we go is completely different. We were thinking, just yesterday, or Monday we had a meeting with my partners and I was talking about this, and I wanted them all to say their someday goal and they’re all like, “well we just want the same someday goal as you.” I’m like, “No, think about it. If it’s different….my goal is this, yours is this, this goal may require us selling Clickfunnels, but this goal requires us not selling CLickfunnels and if we have different someday we’re running towards and yours requires selling Clickfunnels in 3 years and mine requires us never selling it, or selling it 30 years from now, everything we’re doing is going to be completely different. We gotta be on the same page with our someday goals or else we’re all screwed.”
So that’s what we’re going through now, having all of them kind of figure those things out. And then next it’s going to be fun, start doing some of the people inside my team, “What’s your someday goal? Where are you trying to get to?” and then reverse engineer things from there. It’s just interesting. I’m doing it with my business, in my personal life, with my health, with spirituality, all the different things in my life because it’s interesting, as soon as you know where you’re trying to get to, you start looking at the to-do lists you have right now. It’s interesting how none of your to-dos actually advance you towards your someday goal. All it’s doing is killing all these shiny objects that you have sprouting out from where you are right now.
So he says our life should be similar to the timeline prior, where you’ve got, I’ve got I was born, I started wrestling, I launched our first company, we launched Clickfunnels, Clickfunnels took off, and here we are today, and this should be like, “okay, then we did this” We should be able to see that timeline moving forward in the future as clear as we can see it going backwards. As soon as you can see it as clear going forward as you can going backwards, that’s when you stop acting entrepreneurially, which I hate saying that. But you start acting with intention. And it’s like, these are the steps to get to that.
It’s so simple when you look at it now, but I’ve never thought of it that way. I’ve never looked at it that way. And it’s funny because I’ve always felt like I’ve been a visionary, I know where I’m going, I know the steps. And it’s true, I know the steps for 6 months, maybe a year from now, but past then it’s invisible to me. And now that I’m doing this it’s like, holy cow, I’ve got this clarity of this is what I gotta do this year, in five years, all these landmarks to get to that end goal.
Anyway, it’s been a fascinating exercise for me. Like I said, it’s been a month and I’m still trying to, I keep re-tweaking my someday goal and re-tweaking my teams. But I think it’s worth doing. Again, in your personal life, your business, all these different things, that way you’re acting out of intention and you know where you’re going as opposed to just being entrepreneurial and killing and hunting the stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s what makes us great, the reality is none of you guys would have gotten to the point you are now if you weren’t acting entrepreneurial. Because most people, they plan so much and they don’t do anything. The whole ready, fire, aim thing. I believe in that.
It’s like, okay, here are twenty objects, I’m just going to run and throw a bunch of crap against the wall and see what sticks. There’s that part of the processing that we needed to do to find what’s going to be ours. But after you know that and you’re on the path and you know those things, now it’s like okay now let’s start acting intentionally and really get to what we want.
You know when I was wrestling, it was easy. I was like, “I want to be a state champ.” That was so clear in my mind. That’s all I cared about, thought about. You know, 8 drinks lefts, that’s all I did. I wanted to be a state champ. And then I hit it and then I was like, “I want to be an all American.” And then I hit it and it just became really, really easy. And I think it’s, again for me, as we started this exercise, all the goals I had in business had been accomplished 18 months ago. And for the last 18 months, I think that’s probably why this year was crazy for me, I did a lot of stuff. We launched two books, Expert Secrets and the Funnel Hacker Cookbook. We did 5 events. It’s been crazy and it’s because I don’t think I had a focus, so we were just trying to do more.
While that can be good, it’s very entrepreneurial, it can wear you out and can make your life suffer because you don’t know where you’re going so you’re filling all the void with stuff, to-do’s, tasks, ideas, projects, books, holy crap, you see my list. While these things sometimes fill you up, it doesn’t get you towards your goal necessarily. Not that they’re bad, they may have still been landmarks that I needed to do to get there, but I probably would have acted a little differently.
In fact, it’s funny I was doing this one thing, I can’t ruin the secrets, but this next project that I was going to try to get done this year, I’m like, it’s not, my ego wants it done this year, but there’s no purpose. So we set a date for next August to do it. I’m like, “What? That’s almost a year away, I’ve never had that much….” But strategically planning it out, that’s when it fit, that’s when it actually made sense. That’s what got me towards the next goal. It’s been fascinating.
I wish I could show you all the aha’s I’ve had personally with my own business, but it would take forever. Hopefully you’ve had one or two for yourself and as you do the exercise, I promise you guys, it’s fascinating.
So there you go, I hope that helps. Quit acting entrepreneurial, not 100% though, we need you. We need you to be a little crazy, that’s what creates the change and the stuff. I don’t want to take that super power away from you, okay. That’s your X-men super ability, but understand that maybe you can fly right now, but think if you had laser eyes too, now you got two super powers. So maybe it’s not stopping acting entrepreneurial, it’s getting your second super power.
Yes, yes, that’s what it’s called. Oh, this is the second super power, that’s way better. Keep being entrepreneurial, we adding a second super power. I’m titling this podcast that. There you go guys, appreciate you all. If you enjoyed this episode or it helped you at all, please share it. If you’re in iTunes I just found out that there’s a little button that you click and there’s a thing to share an episode, it gives you a link. Take that link, it direct links to this episode and you can go share it with your friends, family members, anybody else who’s an entrepreneur, anyone on your team, in fact, your team, your partner, your employees, so all you guys can focus and figure out where you’re going. Thanks you guys, appreciate you all, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Here’s a behind the scene’s glimpse of the chaos that ensued in the 24 hour webinar.
On today’s episode Russell goes over what happened when he planned and executed a new webinar in under 24 hours. He recounts what went wrong, what went well, and how it did overall. Here are some cool things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out how Russell’s webinar went and hear what he’s changing when he redoes it later this week.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I am actually in the car. Don’t worry I’m safe. Don’t yell at me, “Russell you’re going to die.” I got my phone mounted so we’re safe. I’m just going to be talking, I’m not even going to look at the camera unless I stop. Then I’ll look at the camera.
But I’m excited for today, in fact, I’m heading to a doctor’s appointment. Hopefully I can find that. I’m a little late, but that’s kind of typical for me. Anyway, a lot of fun stuff happening now, and I just wanted to share some stuff because hopefully it will help some of you guys because I’m sure all of you guys are going through some stuff right now as well.
So a couple of things. Yesterday I saw, it’s funny, somebody posted in one of our groups a message about, critiquing the webinar I did last week. So some context on the webinar, this webinar that we had the idea on Tuesday. I had to write brand new slides from scratch on Tuesday. I had all day Wednesday and half a day Thursday. So I had a day and a half to do all the slides, it ended up being like a hundred and sixty slides. I made a registration page, we had to promote it. All this stuff in under a 48 hour period of time. A lot of stuff.
I can’t remember if I told you guys much about it. But when all was said and done, we launched it and we had an 81 1/2 % opt in rate after over 10,000 opt in’s, which is insane, highest converting one I’ve ever had. Number two is we are selling a similar offer, but we are kind of changing it some, to our old funnel hacks. We are changing it, increased the price, we changed the training a little bit. So it’s a similar offer, but it’s different. So I have a lot of stuff going against me. Most of the people on our list have heard me do the webinar selling them the main thing probably, I don’t know a hundred different times.
So I needed and wanted to make a new version. So this I did this whole new thing that showed a bunch of stats and analytics and it was just a really cool thing. So we did the whole thing and put it together, I literally as I ended up with over 10,000 people registered and I’m cranking out slides all the way up to the point where the webinar starts, I think it was 3 eastern, or 3 mountain time it started. I probably had 75% of my slides done at that point. So I didn’t have time to finish, I probably needed another 3 or 4 hours to actually get it done, but I ran out of time. So literally as the clock hit 3 I am copying and pasting all my slides from my old presentation to my new one because I have no time to actually finish it, which is crazy.
So then we start the webinar and we start going, and I never used….we never had a webinar that had that many people register. So we used Zoom instead of Go to Webinar, which I was nervous about because I always used Go to Webinar, it’s like good old faithful. But we decided to try Zoom because Zoom has the capacity to do I think 3 or 5 thousand people live, plus you can stream into Facebook. So you can do Facebook Live or Youtube live and things like that. So I was like, let’s try it. I know it’s scary to try something huge, especially something that you have this many people registered for, but I was like, we keep talking about trying it but we’re scared it’s not going to work at scale but the only way to find out if it works at scale is if you just do it. So we’re like, alright let’s just do it. If worst case scenario we’ll lose millions of dollars.
So we do it, and I start Zoom and at first it’s all frozen up. It’s not processing very well at all. And finally I’m able to get on and people can hear me but I can’t see questions and every time I try to just hover over the thing, there’s just a spinning circle, but people could hear me. So I was like, alright. And we’d already clicked record and it was already streaming to Facebook, so I’m like, I just gotta go.
So I started the presentation, and there’s like 30 people in my office. Not 30, I’m exaggerating, there’s probably 8 people in the office who are trying to get things setup and working and they’re talking and I’m trying to be like, “Don’t talk, I’m doing the webinar now. I’m stressing out.” And the slides aren’t done and in my head I’m all mad about that. I haven’t had a chance to even go through the slides yet, I have no idea if the transitions are working.
All the stress of the moment is just insane. So I start kind of going and man, I totally am fumbling as I start because I’m kind of overwhelmed because the slides aren’t working. I’m overwhelmed just because of the stress of it all. The first probably 15 minutes and I’m just fumbling and I can’t get my rhythm. You know how that feels to get the rhythm. It took me probably 15-20 minutes before I finally started getting the rhythm. But then even with that, because it was a new webinar, I didn’t know super well where it was going. I kind of remembered because I had just created it. But I hadn’t really done it before, so I don’t really know where I’m going, I’m trying to do it all right.
Anyway, I do my best in the confines….some reason I have this weird thing where I set these crazy confines for myself. So we had probably a day and a half total time to…no actually excuse me…..it was the night before, I started on slides at 4pm and the webinar was the next day at 3. So I had 24 hours total, but I had to sleep in the middle there. So I think we were up all that night until like 2 working on slides. So it was less than a 24 hour period of time to do all 160 slides for a new presentation I’d never done before and then give it live in front of all these people.
We ended up having about 3500 people on live and I think we had 11,000 that watched it on Facebook, but that kind of ebbs and flows. I think we had on average about 4 or 500 people on Facebook. So it was crazy.
So I do the webinar, do the presentation, do the pitch and again it’s the first time doing the pitch, there’s all sorts of confusion and questions and things coming up that I didn’t even have time to plan for because I was going to pitch it this way, but I was using slides from my old presentation. It doesn’t even make any sense. But then the powerful thing I did, the night before when I was planning to do this, I messaged like 20 different people in my inner circle that were just people who were killing it in Clickfunnels in different markets and different industries. I was like, “Hey, could you guys jump on tomorrow for like an hour and just tell your Clickfunnels story?” and they were like, “Oh sure.” And amazingly they all show up.
So I get on the webinar and I’m trying to do the interviews but my computer is frozen, the zoom on my computer is frozen up, so I can’t actually interview anyone. We have all these amazing people who took an hour out of their life to be here and I can’t even communicate with them. It took us like 10 minutes to figure out…On my computer we couldn’t do it, so we had to switch the presenter to Mark’s computer, on our team. So then we were on his computer, and then we’re…so crazy.
So then I got it work, so I’m doing the Q&A through his, but then people can’t see the screen, so I’m trying to do call to action’s throughout, and no one can see the countdown clock and it was just kind of like, it was all sorts of messed up. So many problems, so many issues.
But we’re doing the live Q&A and that part, it went for an hour, but it was really good. People’s Q&A’s were so good. I’m praying, please let the Zoom recording stuff work because we want, I need to use these recordings somwehre else. Please, I want to use them again. And luckily the recordings came out. So we do the webinar, it finally ends, it’s like 3 ½ hours from start time to this point. I haven’t slept literally more than a few hours in the last 24 hours. I’m tired, I’m worn out. It was like a thousand degrees in my office because everyone was in there.
It’s just done, I’m soaking wet from sweating, and I was like ugh. We finally end the whole thing and we couldn’t figure out how to actually end it. I’m like, “Don’t talk guys.” Because Zoom’s frozen on my computer, we can’t even end the event. And it was just crazy. Finally we figured out to take it off and end the event, and it was done and wasn’t streaming on Facebook anymore, and then everyone starts cheering and clapping. I was like, “Did we sell any? Because I have no idea.” Who knows.
So finally, we get done and we look at the sales and it was crazy. The highest grossing webinar I’ve ever done to date. I’ve done a couple of webinars in my decade and a half in this game now. So it was really, really good. And obviously there were things that I need to fix and want to fix and change and all that kind of stuff. So I sent emails basically telling everyone, “Hey, the webinar replay crashed,” which is kind of true. I do have a backup but I don’t want to show it to everyone. I want to go actually finish the slides and all that kind of stuff.
So this week, actually in two days, we’re going to redo it again live for all these people, hopefully I’ll have my act together, and you know, it will probably not convert as well because I’m all polished now. But I want it cleaned up and get all the things in the right order, the right place and do the presentation right.
So we’re doing it again Thursday. But it was the highest opt in we’ve ever had, highest grossing webinar I’ve ever had. So many amazing things. We’re super proud of ourselves and all sorts of stuff. Then yesterday, I’m about to leave the office and I login to Facebook just to check out what people are posting on the book of faces. And some dude in one of our coaching programs, he posted this long post about my webinar was fugly and how he watched it and how sick to his stomach he got and I broke my own rules and how it wasn’t truly a blue ocean, it was a proven offer. And then he had a 30 minute video critiquing everything.
And in the video he’s like, “To quote Russell, he said this, yet he blah, blah, blah. And CLickfunnels, we know it’s good, but it’s not great.” And just totally, for 30 minutes…This is somebody who paid me to coach them to teach them how to do webinars. So I want to put the context, he’s in a coaching group specifically dedicated to teaching people how to do a webinar. Now in this comment he also said, “I tried to join your inner circle, but I couldn’t afford the 25 thousand.” So he’s someone who’s paying me good money to learn to do webinars, doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to pay for my coaching program, so instead what he decides to do is spend how many hours of his life critiquing my webinar and telling me why it was the ugliest webinar he’s ever seen, and all the things I did wrong, how I broke my own rules, on and on and on, and all these kinds of things.
And I read this, I didn’t watch the whole video because I was so just annoyed. I was just dumbfounded. I’m just staring like, I don’t even know how to respond. Should I be angry? Should I be happy? Should I be grateful? Should I be…all these emotions. So I go through the whole range of emotions from pissed, I’m going to flat out kill him, to thank you maybe, or no…all these things in between. And all that kept ringing through my head was the quote from Theodore Roosevelt, and I’m driving right now, or else I would read it for you.
But it says something like this, “It’s not the critic who counts. It’s not the man in the arena who points out how the doer of good deeds has messed up, it’s the man who’s in the arena who’s face is marred with dust and sweat and blood and tears, who maybe he fails but at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his position will never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory, nor defeat.”
And that’s my paraphrase of it, Roosevelt said it way cooler than me, but you get the gist. So in my response, I just copied that and I pasted it and I said, “Hey man, here you go.” And I posted it and then I left one other comment and I’m sure that it was missed by him and probably most people, but what I said was, “If I just watched somebody do a million dollars in an hour, the last thing I would do is critique them on what they could do better. What I would do is zip my lips and I would take notes.”
I look back on the decade that I went through trying to learn this craft and this business. I was speaking at events every single weekend and I was doing my presentation. I was watching other speakers. And I watched some speakers that were horrible, but I watched their presentation and how they do it and be like, “Wow, notice how they did that cool thing, that was awesome.” And I would take that piece and add it back to my thing. I’d notice something and like, “Whoa, that was cool.” And I would….. I never once looked at someone’s presentation in a critical route to try to figure out the things they did wrong so I could coach them through how to do it better. That was never, that thought never crossed my mind in a billion, infinity years.
The only thought that crossed my mind is “What is this person doing that I can use? The way they did that, the way they made that transition, the way they closed.” There were people who sucked, who did not do any good, I still was watching and paying attention and figure out what were the nuggets for me? I think….I can’t remember the comment exactly, but it was something to the point of next someone does a million dollars…..I said “message me the next time you do a million dollars in an hour and let me know, because I want to watch that webinar and I’m going to take notes and not give you feed back.” Because that’s the thing.
So I just wanted to kind of put that out there because I think a lot of times we get too smart for our own good and we’re trying to critique people and that’s not your job, that’s not your role. If I…in all honesty, if I wanted your opinion I would have paid you for it, but I haven’t. Therefore don’t give me your opinion, listen. You paid me, and maybe I didn’t do it perfect. Maybe I did the entire webinar in less than 24 hours, maybe there was a billion things happening at the time. And in spite of all those things, it was the highest grossing webinar of all time for us.
So it’s like, I know there were things wrong. I’m fully aware, that’s why I’m redoing it this week. I didn’t even have a chance to finish my slides, the last 40 slides I copied and pasted from a different presentation, because I ran out of time. Yes, I can critique myself too, but until someone’s paying you for your advice, don’t give them your advice. Sit back and listen.
I’ve done a couple of podcasts on this recently. You as a student should be, you pick your mentors, so pick your mentor and then stop, listen, and then do what they say. Don’t be like, “well you actually said this.” Dude, that’s not your role. Stop, listen. And I say that at the same time that I want to always be coachable. And I feel like I’m a very coachable person. I have multiple coaches working with me in different aspects of my life, but the difference is that I paid those people for their advice because they are at a level beyond me of that thing that I want to learn how to do.
So I would never sign up for John Carlton’s copywriting course and when I was in there critique his sales letters and tell him how to do it better, in a billion years. I would say, dude, I’m paying you, and maybe there’s things I might do different and might do better, but I am listening because I paid you. I am paying attention, trying to find the pieces of gold that I can then apply back to my thing.
So I hope for everybody else who was watching that, you know it was an imperfect thing and hopefully first off, that was inspirational for you to see, wow Russell screwed up a lot and then still made a bunch of money. Maybe there’s something here. And second off, I hope you learn that you’re watching…I did an episode probably a year ago about watching the magician’s hand. I’m trying to, in my books and my podcast and these places, I’m trying to show, I don’t hold things back. I hope you see that. I’m like, here’s everything, and I give it to you so you see it all. But then when I’m doing the thing, watch, pay attention and listen. Watch the magician’s hands at work and see what they’re trying to do and try to understand it. Don’t try to critique. That’s not going to help you or them. Watch and learn.
And that’s all, that’s my message for today. Hope that helps. I hope you guys enjoyed this story. It was a lot of fun. I’m excited to do the webinar again on Thursday, and hopefully I don’t screw it up by fixing it. Anyway, that’s it. I’m going to let you guys go. Appreciate you all. I hope you have an amazing day. Go out there and change the world. Like I said, if I can do a webinar in 24 hours, I’ll give you guys at least 48 because I’ve done it a few times, you’ve got 48 hours to get your webinar done and launched.
We’ve got a bunch of people who have gone through our Two Comma Club coaching, which is all about getting their webinar up and launched and live and some people have gone through the training, we’ve done three cycles of it now. They’ve gone through three cycles of it and still haven’t launched their webinar. It’s like, just do it. Russell what if the webinar software crashes? Yeah, mine could have crashed too, I just did it. What happens if it doesn’t close right? Then just do it, who cares. Just do it again if it doesn’t close. Just do it. Just go out there and just do it. I’m going to go you guys. Appreciate you all, thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you guys soon.
One of the traits of all the truly successful people in the world.
On this episode Russell talks about why he has a new coach and how he let himself and that coach down last week by not keeping a commitment. Here are some awesome things to listen for on this episode:
So listen here if you want to know how to be coachable and be able to succeed.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you guys are ready for some fun.
Alright everyone, I just dropped something off at my kids school because yes, once again, they forgot something. They sound kind of like their dad.
Anyway, I just want to jump on today because I, if you’ve been listening you know that I recently hired another coach in my life. I try to have at least one, if not multiple coaches at any given time to coach me through different stuff. Because I’ve found that, in fact I was telling my kids this last night. I said, if you want to be successful at whatever it is, pick the thing you want to be successful at first, it could be school, basketball, trombone, whatever it is and then number two is find a coach to actually coach you through it.
So that is what I told them last night when I put them to bed. And I told them I practice what I preach. I figure out stuff that I want to be better at in my life and then I go find a coach to coach me through the whole process and hold me accountable. A little while ago I was listening to a podcast from Ryan Moran and Jeff Woods talking about the one thing and loved it. So I called Jeff and hired him and he’s my coach through things. So I had my second coaching call today and I wanted to post this, make this video to walk you guys how to be coachable.
Because it’s shocking to me how uncoachable most people are. In fact, I did a Periscope about this 2 years ago or something like that. It’s funny because I remember when I was wrestling I started doing Freestyle and Greco and that kind of happens during the off season. I had this coach named Greg Williams, who is now the coach at UVU, he would go and teach me stuff and I remember between matches he’d pull me aside, he’s like, “Hey, you need to level change better, you gotta lower your whatever….” And just walk me through what I needed to do and then I’d walk back out and I’d just do the thing he told me.
And I remember because he told me afterwards, after I’d been in the program for a year or so, he said, “You’re one of the most coachable athletes that I’ve ever had. You’re not the most talented, but one of the most coachable.” I was like, “I don’t even…what does that mean, coachable?” he’s like, “Most people I tell them what to do and they listen, nod their head and then they don’t do it. With you, I tell you what to do and with the next match you go and do that thing. That’s not normal. Most people don’t do that. You’re really, really coachable.” I was like, “Huh, I assumed everyone just did that. If they have a coach that they believe in why wouldn’t they just listen to what they say and then do it.”
In fact, I had a podcast a couple of weeks ago talking about pick a mentor, listen and then do. Same thing. I look at, It was funny, Dan Henry, if you know Dan, he’s one of our inner circle members who bought the Dotcom Secrets book, read the chapter on Perfect Webinar, did a Perfect Webinar and within 5 months made a million bucks. So he went into the Clickfunnels group this weekend, he’s like, “Hey guys, Russell taught the Perfect Webinar, I did it and made a million bucks. Why aren’t you guys all just doing that?” He was very confused. Dan’s very coachable.
Then there’s like, as of this morning, 170 comments from people and it was basically 170 excuses of why people hadn’t done it yet. “Well I’m still working on my slides. Well, I’m not really a pitch person. Well, I can’t figure out my offer.” Just thing after thing. And he’s like, “Dude, just freaking do it. You’ve got the best coach in the world telling you….” And it was funny, because even one guy who was a coach was like, “Well I’ve coached my people and it doesn’t work for everyone.” Dan’s comment was like, “Well you must not be a very good coach then.” Which was awesome.
But again, the point of this is being coachable is just doing what the coach says. It’s been fun because I’ve had one coach for the last year that I’m working with on one aspect of my life and she’s been awesome. I’m not perfect at doing what she says, but I think I’m pretty good at doing that. And I assumed that I was with most people, but Jeff’s been coaching me and it’s funny because this was our second coaching call this morning and one of the things he wanted me to do, I didn’t have time to do it. And instead of letting me off the hook, “Oh, it’s okay. You can do it next week.” He was like, I wish you could hear it, it was in the first 30 seconds of the thing. He was like, something like, “What happened?” and I was like, “Oh, I’m actually doing it this week because Todd’s flying in today from Atlanta. Todd’s my partner in Clickfunnels and we’re doing a lot of planning and stuff like that.” And he’s like, “How do you think your planning would have been better if you would have actually finished this?” And I was like, “Oh crap. Probably better.”
Anyway, so it helped put my feet to the fire and then at the end of the call he was basically like, “Okay, next week these are the things you have to have done by…when are you going to have these done?” I was like, “Friday.” He’s like, “That’s not specific enough for me.” “Friday at 4:30 my time.” He’s like, “Cool, if you don’t get them done what happens?” I was like, “You’re going to punish me maybe?” he was like, “If you don’t have it done by Friday at 4:30 we’re cancelling the call for next Monday.” I was like, “Oh crap.” He’s holding my feet to the fire. So many things I could walk you through from a coaching standpoint what I’m enjoying about being coached by him.
But it was just making me make sure I do it. And I think one of the problems a lot of us have is we let ourselves off the hook. In fact, I did it and again, I’m a very, very coachable person. Even with that, this week I let myself off the hook. I don’t need to finish part of it because of this, yet I had committed to getting that part done. It’s just interesting. It’s funny because throughout the week I was proud. We kind of picked out the one thing I was going to focus on for the week. And from that, I had found the roll I was looking for, I found the person doing the interview process, going through the whole thing, and I was impressed by how fast I was moving, yet I hadn’t followed through on all my commitments. I had done most of them but not all of them. And it was just like crap, I gotta remember that. I gotta make and keep commitments.
People that succeed in life, there’s one really strange commonality between all of them, they’re good at not just making commitments, everyone can make commitments, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to make money. I’m going to blah, blah, blah.” Everyone’s good at making commitments, but people who are successful are good at making and keeping commitments. I failed at one of my commitments for this week and it sucks. It’s frustrated me because I know better than that, I’m someone who makes and keeps commitments and I didn’t on one thing. I did on most of them, but I didn’t keep this one.
So for those of you guys who want to be coachable and want to have success, understand that the big commonality is that successful people are making and keeping commitments. So again, find a coach or whatever it is and then make a commitment and keep that commitment and just do it. And don’t give it all excuses.
Alex Hermosi at the last inner circle meeting said that every sales call you’re on someone’s getting sold. Either you’re selling them on the product or service that they need, or they’re selling you on an excuse of why of they can’t get it. And it’s just like, dang, it’s so interesting. You’re either buying the excuse or they’re buying the product. And it’s the same thing for us. I just look at that thread of 170+ people, they each have their excuse of why they hadn’t done it yet. And Dan was like, “Dude, I did it and within 5 months was a millionaire. Why don’t you guys just do it.” And they’re selling themselves on excuses as opposed to just making a commitment and then keeping a commitment.
So that is my message for today. Make and keep commitments. All successful people do, they’re good at making them and good at keeping them. I failed this week. I made a bunch of commitments and I kept almost all of them but I did not keep all of them. So this week, I’m going to be better. I’m going to make and keep commitments to myself, to my coaches, and to the people that I love and care about, and that I work with and work for and that I serve, and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s my goal and game plan, make and keep commitments this week. I’m going to be very specific, going to write down all the commitments I make, I’m going to make sure that I keep each and every one of them and that is the path of success.
So there you go guys. I hope that helps. Make and keep commitments, write them down and make sure you do them and don’t let yourself off the hook, otherwise you’ll just keep making excuses and again, if you’re buying that success then you didn’t buy the thing you actually gotta do. So that’s all I got you guys. I’m heading in for the day. It’s going to be a fun week, I get to work all week. Todd’s in town, we’re going to plan, we’re going to plot, we’re going to scheme, we’re going to make Clickfunnels even better if that’s possible for all of you guys and try to figure out how to serve you guys better at a higher level. So I appreciate you all, thanks for listening and we’ll see you guys on the next episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast.
It happened the day you took personal responsibility for a problem that wasn’t your own.
On this episode Russell talks about how every entrepreneur is someone who found a problem and took responsibility for it. Here are some of the enlightening things in this episode:
So listen here to find out how to be an entrepreneur by taking responsibility for a problem that you didn’t create but want to fix.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to a late night episode of Marketing Secrets.
Hey everyone, I’m about to head to bed but I listened to a podcast this week from Ryan Moran, from capitalism.com and he’s got the Freedom Fast Lane show podcast, which is pretty awesome. I love it a lot and he goes deep into the ecommerce side and also business investing and other things that I don’t typically focus on, which has been fun for me to kind of listen to him and world. But he said something in one of his presentations, it was a stage event somewhere, I don’t even know, a few episodes back. And I don’t remember how he said or what he said but it sparked a thought in my mind.
So I’m probably going to slaughter how he said it. He said it probably much better than me, but the concept was so cool. What he basically said is the difference between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world, yes we are different folk if you haven’t noticed. But what he said was interesting, he said, entrepreneurs are the people who see a problem and then take responsibility for it. Isn’t that weird?
I think about the world we live in today. The problem is most people don’t responsibility for anything. Even though they do things that are really bad or wrong or whatever, they won’t take responsibility. They want to blame it on their mom, or their brother, or their sister, or whoever. The world is all about blaming someone else for all the issues that it has. What makes us entrepreneurs weird is we see a problem and instead of blaming somebody else, we look at it and say, “I’m going to take responsibility for that problem, I’m going to figure out an answer.”
And when I heard that I was just like, oh my gosh, that is so interesting. Because most people don’t do that. Most people don’t see an issue, a problem and then be like, “I’m going to take responsibility for that.” I was thinking about this with Clickfunnels for example. For a decade we tried to build funnels and it was frustrating. And yeah, we could have blamed everybody else, I’m sure we did. Everyone else did that, it’s the tech designers, the developers, programming is hard, all the things. It wasn’t for us until we said, you know what it does suck and I’m going to take responsibility for it, this is my issue now. And then we figure out a way to solve it. And that’s when everything changed.
That’s so fascinating. For you, as an entrepreneur, or someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, I think if we all make conscious decision of what we are doing is consciously saying, “That problem right there, I’m taking on myself, I’m taking responsibility for that.” Instead of doing what most of us do, what’s our human nature. “Oh it’s them. Oh it’s her.” I didn’t fix anything because of this, because of this. We just want to pass the blame, pass the buck so often, but that’s what makes us weird. That’s what makes us different. It makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs.
We see those problems, we see those issues and we take a personal responsibility for it. I was thinking about this as I was looking at the Inner circle meetings over the last couple of weeks. I could go through all 100 of my entrepreneurs and share this, but just a couple of them off my head.
Pamela Weibold for example, she was a doctor and she started seeing all of her friends who were doctors committing suicide. Person after person after person. And she could have sat there and blamed this, blamed that, but instead she stopped and said, “I’m going to take personal responsibility for this issue and I’m going to save doctors lives.” And she’s gone out there and done that. She’s created a platform. She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever seen. She’s literally spent every penny she’s ever made to go and save doctors lives. She’s like, “I can live on 20 grand a year, I’m good. Every penny I make goes back into helping save doctors from committing suicide.”
Because she took that as her own personal responsibility. That’s not her responsibility, it’s not her fault. Yet, she looked at it and said, this is my responsibility. That day she became an entrepreneur.
You think about another one, Annie Grace, who is so cool. She’s someone who her whole life drank socially. It got to a point where she kept drinking and drinking and she couldn’t break away from it. And she started looking around and it wasn’t just her, it was other people and she went on this mission and started saying….and again, drinking is not her responsibility. People struggling and trying to give up alcohol addiction, that’s not her responsibility, she’s got better things to do with her life.
But she looked at it and said, “This problem, I’m going to take responsibility for it.” And she’s gone out and changed thousands of people’s lives. Thousands of people she has helped break away from this addiction that’s robbing them of their freedom, their happiness. She took that personal. She didn’t have to, she didn’t need to but she decided to and that day she became an entrepreneur.
I could go through person after person after person after person, the day that they looked at this thing, this problem that wasn’t even supposed to be their own, but they saw it. And whatever it was, I don’t know if tuition, if it’s God, if it’s a spark, if it’s your brain. Whatever it is, you see it and there’s that spark saying, “That one’s mine. That is the problem I’m going to fix and I’m going to take personal responsibility. It may not be my fault, but I am the one who’s going to fix this and change it.”
And that’s what makes you different as an entrepreneur, and it’s fascinating and exciting. And if you wondered, how do I become an entrepreneur, how do I do that? It’s time to start looking at that and saying, “Instead of pushing responsibility on different places, different things, different people, different whatever, look at a problem and take on that responsibility yourself. And that’s the game plan, that’s how it works.
Anyway, I heard that three or four days ago and it’s been ringing through my head over and over. I keep thinking about person after person after person in my inner circle, and entrepreneurs I work with, and inner circle members, and Two Comma Club members, and I look at the people around me who are serving and doing stuff. Every single time I could link back to, that is the problem they took personal responsibility for. They didn’t have to, they didn’t need to, but they did. And that’s the magic.
So I hope that helps you guys. I hope that rings through your head and makes you start looking and being more aware of the stuff around you that’s happening and trying to figure out what it is that you’re going to take personal responsibility for. Because when you do that, that’s the day you’ll become an entrepreneur, and that’s the day you will literally change the world.
Thanks you guys, so much for everything. Thanks for your support, thanks for your effort. Thanks for your contribution to the world. We love you guys, we appreciate you guys, we enjoy serving you guys. And we’re so grateful that you listen to this podcast. If you like this podcast and learn anything from it, please go to iTunes and subscribe and share it with another entrepreneur who could help. Thanks so much you guys. Talk to you soon.
The power of vulnerability, acting with urgency, and a whole lot more…
On this episode Russell gives some of the awesome highlights from the latest set of Inner Circle mastermind meetings. Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to hear these and many other highlights from the inner circle mastermind meetings.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets. This is the day after the mastermind and I’ve got a whole bunch of secrets to share with you guys.
Alright everyone, inner circle mastermind just ended. We have been going, basically I’ve had 8 days of inner circle mastermind meetings with a week break. So group one came Monday, Tuesday. It was a group of 25 entrepreneurs. Then Wednesday, Thursday. Then a week off. Then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So 4 groups of 100, 4 groups of 25 equals 100 entrepreneurs, they’re my inner circle. It’s a cool group because its interesting watching how everybody within this group, year after year, everyone keeps growing together.
People first came in a while ago and everyone was trying to get their businesses launched and now it’s getting to the point where they’re doing, last set of meetings everyone was doing 30-50 grand a month. Now at this set of meetings everyone’s doing 100-200 grand a month. Everyone together as a group keeps leveling up. We’ve had a couple of members breaking the million dollars a month mark and now everyone else, that’s what they’re gunning for. It’s just so inspiring and so cool to watch what’s happening.
The businesses and industries are so different. We have everyone from, I’m trying to find the book right now. Dr. Wiebold, Pamela Wiebold who is helping doctors who commit suicide, helping to not commit suicide and literally saving lives, to people teaching business to people teaching dentists, everything in between. So many just amazing people. In fact, I’ve got from this meeting, those who are watching the video, these are my two notebooks, one got completely filled up and one got half filled up. That’s a lot for one set of meetings. Anyway, it’s amazing.
Obviously I can’t share everything, because it would take 8 days. But there were so many cool things. So I’m just going to kind of share a couple things as I’m flipping through here. Maybe over the next few weeks I’ll share other cool thoughts and ideas. So as I’m flipping through my pages, just some things I jotted down that were so, so powerful.
One of them was from Alison Prince, she was talking about through her course that she celebrates the people in her community. She said when she wins they celebrate me, because I celebrate them. I thought, how cool is that? As you’re finding more success, you’ll probably notice this, people around you, you think everybody would be happy for you, but instead it’s usually the opposite where they’re not happy and there’s this weird thing under where you’re like, “you should be happy for me. I’m having success.”
But when you’re depressed, everyone’s like “Oh me too.” And everyone loves you, but when you have success usually people aren’t happy and it’s weird. So it’s kind of cool within your community as you celebrate their success, they celebrate yours. So it gives you a spot to be able to talk about your wins and get people to celebrate with you. So that’s kind of fun.
What else? So many cool things. One thing from Alex and Layla, they were talking about in their ads, that they actually say what they’re really feeling. Most of us who write ads, we’re trying to be all postured like, “number one top secret blah, blah, blah.” And it was cool, what they talked about in their ads. They literally in their ads say, “Hey I feel like a cheesy person writing an ad, but I need to get this message out to you. I’m not going to….You’re probably thinking this right now and I want to make sure that you…..” Just kind of breaking down those barriers in the ad. Because it’s an ad and people know it’s an ad, so instead of being an ad, actually having fun with it. If you saw what their acquisition costs were, it works really, really good.
Another cooll thing, a lot of times we talk about in our company, setting KPI’s, Key Performance Indicators and things like that, but one thing that Alex Charfen said, “if you look at a sports team, there’s two things they all have. If you ask a football team, ‘what are your goals?’ ‘My goal is to win the superbowl and be in the Hall of Fame.’ There’s a superbowl goal, which is like their goal. Then there’s the legacy goal, which is the Hall of Fame.”
So it’s cool, we talked about for a company what is your superbowl goal? And what’s your Hall of Fame goal? And also within your organization, with working with you team members, what’s their superbowl, what’s a win for your company? Do they know what it is? I don’t think my team knows. I haven’t really sketched, “This is our goal. This is how we get to the superbowl.” It hasn’t ever been defined, this is the thing, this is how we get in the hall of fame. And I think now that that’s a thing in my head, I’m so excited to figure out what’s our company’s superbowl goal and what’s our hall of fame goal? When you have those it becomes more clear, more tangible.
David Derricks awesome, talking about a bunch of stuff. One thing is he just wrote a new book called the Dream 100, which is a big concept none of us ever…I talk about it all the time and nobody ever does it. And my quote at the top says this is the foundation for our entire company. If you’re not doing Dream 100 yet, it’s time to start. Go back and listen to any of my stuff on Dream 100 but it’s how we figured out what our market was, what our blue ocean was. How we figured out where our customers…..everything we’ve done was based on the Dream 100 concept. There’s so many good things here. I don’t even know where to…
Oh this is a good one. So Brian Bowman, such a stud. He had a really cool, emotional presentation. He talked about how he was working hard and moving forward and getting things done. And he had a coach who was one of Garret White’s coaches, one of the Warrior Week coaches. He asked, “What’s your target?” and he’s like, “This is what I’m going for.” And then he asked him, “Are you operating with a sense of urgency?” And Brian, while he’d been working hard and hustling and all these kinds of things, he’s like, “Am I operating with a sense of urgency?” And I don’t have permission to tell his story behind what and how, but as soon as he had that thought in his mind, everything shifted for him.
He went and instead of moving things toward a goal he was like, “I need to operate with a sense of urgency.” And I think how many times for us we’re like, “Yeah, we’re moving forward, moving towards things. I’m going to launch my product someday. I’m going to write my book. I’m blah, blah, blah.” Whatever our thing is, but it’s like that’s good, but are you operating with a sense of urgency? Is this doing…when is this….this needs to be urgent. If it’s not urgent, you’re never going to do it. So are you operating with a sense of urgency? That was just so powerful. How many times do we not do that? How many times are we just kind of wandering, doing our thing, and it’s not urgent. Because of that days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years and sometimes we never get it accomplished.
I think one of the big reasons we’ve had so much success with Clickfunnels is because we do operate with a sense of urgency. I’m always stressing out, which maybe is to my downfall, it’s what makes me tired all the time. I just think it’s interesting, operating with a sense of urgency, having that as a thing we are thinking through all the time. So many good things.
What else, what else? Natalie Hodson talking about the power of vulnerability. How vulnerability is the ultimate human connector. So many of us, we try to be postured and perfect and that’s why, because we’re trying to get connection, we think people want to see us perfect and instead it actually pushes people away. How vulnerability is the big secret. It was interesting, Natalie just joined the inner circle. But she came to our FHAT event in February, five or 6 months ago and she was telling this story. She was creating, she’s in the weight loss, fitness market, and she was working out live on Live streaming or Facebook Live or whatever, she did a work out. She’s a mom, she has two kids and during her workout she wet herself, on camera, live in front of the entire world and how embarrassing it was.
And obviously that’s an embarrassing thing and most people would never talk about that again, they would leave the video, they would run away from it. But instead she realized that, “If I’m struggling with this, I bet other people probably are too. Maybe I can help them.” And she found a business partner or a content person, who that’s what they specialize in. Helping women to strengthen their pelvic floor so they don’t have those issues. And she created a $37 dollar book teaching the process and she put it out there and on a sales page she’s got pictures of her on a live stream with peed pants in front of the entire world. And she talked about this problem that she has and she knows all these other women have.
Anyway, from February until now she sold 50,000 copies of a $37 book. So over a million dollars in sales. And think about how many women’s lives she’s been able to affect because she didn’t posture herself and come off perfect all the time, because she was willing to be vulnerable. It’s just such a powerful thing. I look at the times in my life when I’ve gotten real connection with my audience, it’s not when I’ve been sharing the highlight reel, like we like to do. I think what’s good to do is sometimes to touch on the high reel. “Hey, I’m awesome. Just want to make sure you know this, but let me tell you the truth.” And then break it down. And that has been a theme.
In fact, the third inner circle group, I think I’ve never seen so many tears in a mastermind group in my life. The girls were crying, the men were crying, everybody was crying. But because people actually got vulnerable and shared and that’s been a big theme throughout the inner circle. You go to other masterminds and people are sharing the highlight reel and bragging about stuff, where with us everyone has to share, “Here’s what we’re doing awesome, but let me get vulnerable and share with you what’s actually happening.” And then we work at that level. It’s different and interesting and causes real actual change.
Anyway, it was amazing. I wish I could take all of you guys along on these journeys. But a lot of our inner circle members are going to be speaking at Funnel Hacking Live. The sales page for Funnel Hacking Live will be going live next week, it’s at funnelhackinglive.com and you’ll have a chance to hear Natalie talk about the power of vulnerability, a lot of these other people I pick are speakers for the most part, inner circle members. So I have a chance to see them present here in my office a couple of times a year. I get to know them intimately, I understand their business, I understand where it fits with what I want to share with our audience. So a lot of them will be speaking at this.
So if you don’t have tickets yet, when we go live next week, get them. We pre-sold out over a thousand tickets, I think we have another, I don’t know how many left. Not a lot. So if you want to be there, you know you need to be there and you do, now is the time. Funnelhackinglive.com, get on the waiting list and then wait. My guess is probably Tuesday it will go live. So by the time you hear this, it may be live. But make the effort to be there. It’ll be worth it, I promise you, it will change your life forever. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
So yeah, that’s basically the best spot to get the actual highlights, at Funnel Hacking Live. Anyway, with that said, appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening in today to the podcast, and we’ll talk to you guys again soon. Bye.
A really cool lesson I learned from my new coach and how it applies to your funnel.
On today’s episode Russell talks about how his new coach has helped him figure out his someday goal and the steps he should be taking to achieve it. Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:
So listen here to learn the steps to achieving your someday goals.
---Transcript---
Hey what’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets.
Hey everyone, hope you guys are all having an amazing day. I’m home from 2 days of inner circle mastermind meetings, which have been insanely cool. All the groups are so amazing, but this one was emotional. I think everybody in the group cried at least once or twice or something. It was crazy. So amazing. It’s an honor to be part of it and hang out with awesome entrepreneurs like that who are literally changing the world in so many different markets and industries. I wish I could just tell you guys all the stories from everyone.
But it was amazing and we got the last group, group 4 coming the next two days. So it’s been fun, stressful, exciting all wrapped up into one amazing thing. Also it’s been fun, I mentioned a little while ago how I hired a new coach, and it’s been really, really good. He’s one of the main guys over at The One Thing, his name is Jeff. It’s interesting because I read The One Thing book a while ago and I remember, I think when I read it I didn’t like it. I think at the time we had just launched 12 companies in a year. And I was bitter against it, but everyone kept recommending it to me. That book and the Essentials came out at similar times and everyone was like, “you gotta read them.” So I read them both and I was just like, “They want me to focus on one thing. I hate that idea.”
So I kind of didn’t like the books. And fast forward to last week, I just kind of got back into it in the last week. I went and listened to a bunch of podcasts from The One Thing, I started re-reading the book, I got the main dude coaching me Monday mornings and it’s really, really cool. What’s interesting is, since he started coaching me, I’ve had this big epiphany, big aha, big realization inside, and then as I’ve been coaching the inner circle the last two days, I’m watching the people who are leveling up really, really quickly and there’s a consistent theme behind all the people who are growing fast versus who…..everyone’s growing, but the ones who are really quick.
It’s interesting thing, it’s funny, the thing that I got in my coaching session was, it came back to Steven R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, which I read back in high school. It was start with the end in mind. It’s been interesting, as I’ve been going through the coaching stuff. Man the first, it feels like it’s been like a month because I move pretty quick on stuff. But the first exercise he had me do was figure out, what is your someday goal? Where do you want to be someday? So it’s not like 5 years from now, or 10 years, like in the future, where is it you really want to go?
It’s been interesting as I’ve kind of done this exercise, I can walk you guys through what it is, but it’s morphed, 3 or 4 times to radically different things and I one of the big aha’s I realized when I went through this exercise is that literally my someday goal, I achieved it like 18 months ago. So the last 18 months I’ve been wandering without really a focus or a goal other than just more, which is interesting.
So he’s had me keep focusing, what’s your someday goal? Begin with the end in mind. What are we trying to get to? So I figured out initially, here’s my someday goal, and someday goal can be about your business, you personally, your relationships, your spirituality, whatever you’re trying to figure out for yourself. Then he came back and said, “Okay, what do you have to had accomplished within 5 years to keep you on track for your someday goal?” So I was like, “Okay well, to have that I need to have this in place, these things need to be in place in the next 5 years.” And he came back and said, “Okay, what do you need within a year to be able to hit your 5 year goal? And what do you need by the end of this year to hit your one year goal? And what do you need by the end of this week to hit your yearend goal? Or your month goal?”
So as you do this it’s interesting because you start getting more and more clear on all the steps. It was funny because it was like, as I did that, as I identified, had the end in mind, I started going back forward and I got to the things I needed to do. I looked at my to-do list and none of the things on my to-do list actually got me any closer to my someday goal.
All the sudden I realized that I’m doing all these to-do’s that are good, they make me feel good, I check off the box, but none of them are actually moving me towards what I’m really wanting. I was like, well what’s the one thing I need to do today that’s going to help me hit my goal for the end of this week, which will hit my goal for the end of the month, blah blah, blah, all the way to the thing. And as I started asking those questions it blew my mind what the one thing was that I needed to focus on. It was not by any stretch what I thought it was going to be, what I assumed was the most important thing.
And after this exercise he wanted me to come back and refine it and change things. So I kept getting….my someday goal changed three or four times and I started realizing as I was looking at that, it took me a while to figure it out. In fact, I still don’t know if I have it completely figured out.
But the message I want to share with you guys is just that. Beginning with the end in mind. Again, the inner circle members having the most success is because they have a very clear end in mind. What is it they are trying to accomplish? And from there it’s easy to reverse engineer the funnels and make that happen. People who are struggling, they’re building funnels to be able to sell a product or a service, not with the end in mind. Does that make sense? It’s a little intricacy, but it’s interesting.
I’ve had this really cool experience over the last two days, to kind of reflect I’m listening to all my entrepreneurs talk and teach and share what they’re doing and really start thinking more and more, what is the end? I need to know really clearly for my business, I need to begin with the end in mind. Or is my goal to get people in Clickfunnels? Is my goal to get people in Two Comma Club Coaching? Is my goal to get people into Inner Circle? What is the actual end goal?
As soon as you identify it, that becomes the end goal and it becomes easy to see, well if that’s it, here are the funnels I need to reverse engineer to get people so that they will come up into that thing. For example, Dean Holland, he’s been in my inner circle for 3 years now. He basically over the last few months shut his entire company down and rebuilt it from the ground up but this time with a definite, very clear end in mind. This is where I’m trying to go. Because of that built out the funnels very simply in order, he launched and in the first 28 days built up $106,000 recurring income. Just because he began with an end in mind.
So I think most of us, including me. I’m guilty of this as well, that’s been my big thing for the last 2 days, what’s the end goal. From a business standpoint, from a life standpoint, but also the customer journey, the value ladder. I talk a lot about in the Dotcom Secrets book, this value ladder, taking somebody through. But I would say even my value ladder isn’t completely clearly defined. It’s morphed and changed so much and I’m really coming back now and figuring that out.
Dana Derricks when he was doing his presentation he was talking about his big aha. He said that us as creators want to keep creating and creating and creating. He said because of that, “If I look at my value ladder it kind of goes up a little and then it splits off in three different places. Some of those go up and some don’t and it gets really mushy really quick.” He realized he had to clearly define the value ladder. We’re going from here to here to here. So now he’s beginning with the end in mind. And what he said was interesting. It’s was funny because it’s something that I, a recurring thought I’ve had in my mind as well. Okay, I can’t keep creating new stuff that just spurts off my value ladder and shifts people all over the place.
If I need to get my creative juices out there and just create something, the things I create need to be on the front end of the value ladder. They should only be free plus shipping or they should only be low ticket things to get somebody in, but the back of the value ladder should never shift, never change. That should be just a thing that’s there. And man, I just resonate with that. I was like, okay I obviously have my value ladder, I’ve got things in place, but I need to really specify this is the path, the process, the order and then just focus on the front end stuff. So it’s exciting.
I’m working on something so cool, I wish I could show you guys. You will see it soon. I’m probably about thirty days away from rolling it out. It’s not a big product launch or anything, it’s a subtle, but I’m calling it an ascension funnel that is almost like a video game to send people through our value ladder. And to be able to accomplish, or get people to the end in mind, get them to that spot. So I’m crafting, we’ve got the design of it done and we’ve got the pieces and I’m figuring out the path. So you will see, you’ll probably start getting emails and you’ll, you may not be aware of it, so please watch. Watch what I’m doing. If you see an email and you click on it and there’s a cartoon thing, then you know that it’s being executed. I’m going to be sharing it at Funnel Hacking Live though, probably. As long as it works good, which I’m pretty sure it will.
Nobody talks about ascension funnels because no one’s really executed one that I’ve seen successfully for almost 5 1/2 , 6 years. And the one I saw was just because I had intimate behind the scenes access to the person’s business who was doing it. Anyway, I’m going to be mastering it, perfecting it and then we’ll be showing it at Funnel Hacking Live. So if you haven’t got your tickets yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com. The event sales page will be going live next week, but by the time you hear this, it’ll probably be live or close to live. We’ve already pre-sold 1200 tickets, so we don’t have a ton left, so if you want to come to the event…and I know you do. I would go to funnelhackinglive.com ASAP and get your tickets.
So that’s the game plan. The last thing I wanted to kind of say is, again so many of us start our business like, here’s a product and we start building funnels based on that product. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how most people do it. It’s how I’ve done it a lot of times. Because of that, I think we get lost in the weeds of where we’re trying to go and often times we never get there because we don’t know where we’re going. And again, as I’ve been working with my coach on this, which has been really fun. It’s been cool because I’m clearly defining my someday goal, clearly defining the end and then from there I can reverse engineer all the pieces I need to make that happen.
I think the same thing is true with funnels. It’s just begin with the end in mind. What’s the top of the value ladder? Where do you really want to take people? Figure that out and then reverse engineer, to do that here are the funnels I need. You got a path and a process. Anyway, it’s exciting. I love it. I love this game. I love my entrepreneurs. I love the inner circle. I love all of you guys. I love Clickfunnels. I’m having the time of my life. And hopefully, also I’m helping. I’m doing my best.
It’s funny, I was reading, somebody I care about wrote a really cool post about what we do. And I was reading it and in the comments 3 or 4 people who were like, “I just don’t like Russell. I can’t connect with him. I don’t like his energy. I don’t like…” Whatever. It just kills me. It’s tough because I’m always trying to give and serve and do whatever I can and I hate when I don’t connect with everybody. But that’s okay as well. Hopefully my message gets to you and you’re able to take whatever it is you share out to people. And people connect with you, people I would never connect with. Hopefully you can connect with them and change them. So that’s one of my goals. Hopefully I connect with you and if I do, that’s the key. Take your energy, get out there, share your message with other people and change the world the way you can.
Because unfortunately not everyone is always going to like me. And that’s the same for you. Not everyone’s going to like you. But the people who do, they’ll hear your voice and they’ll come to you and you’ll be able to help them and serve them and it’ll make the quality of their life so much better, which in return will make the quality of your life so much better. So that’s all I got tonight you guys. Appreciate you all, I’m going to go to bed and get ready for inner circle tomorrow and that’s about it. See you guys soon. Bye.
Listen in on this unique conversation after a late night mastermind outside the Clickfunnels headquarters.
On this episode Russell talks about contrast with Dave and Steven. Here are some interesting things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out why contrast in your marketing is so important.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I’m here with Dave and Steven, what’s up guys? Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast, we got a special edition happening right now.
Okay, so we just got done. We had a little Boise Mastermind group, they meet every month around different places, and we never had a chance to go. But we actually hosted it here in the Clickfunnels offices tonight. So we put the kids to bed and come here and we’re here for 4 hours or so, talking about tons of stuff.
So we just had a really cool conversation while Dave went back in to go to the bathroom and he missed it.
Dave: It’s Alex Charfen’s fault.
Russell: Alex did this podcast about the number one supplement for entrepreneurs and it ends up being water and then…
Dave: 3 gallons later.
Russell: It’s really convincing, you guys should listen to it. We’re all obsessed, have you listened to it yet?
Steven: Well I know enough that I’m just drinking a lot of water.
Russell: It kind of freaked us out so we’re drinking insane amounts of water. It’s like bathroom breaks every 30 seconds. Dave’s like, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” And then he missed this huge conversation. So I gotta retell it and I might as well retell it right now with you guys because it was actually really interesting.
So what we’re talking about…I got a black face, let me come here in the light. Let there be light. Alright so what we’re talking about. So those who are listening you have no idea what’s happening, but those watching the video, we’re in front of the Clickfunnels offices at nighttime, we’re under the streetlight.
So I was listening to a podcast that Ryan Deiss did on the perpetual traffic talking about the Chatbooks viral video and he basically played it, paused it, talked about the before state and the after state of the woman in that video. Which you guys have seen the video obviously. If you havne’t seen the video go to harmonbrothers.com and click on the Chatbooks video. Probably the best, I would say probably their best viral video, it’s really, really good.
But he’s talking about the before state and the after state and how good that video did. Here’s where she was at before, here’s where you’ll be after the product. Before, after, before, after. We started talking about how the big secret to copy and sales is contrast. I was telling them ten years ago I went to a course with Matt Furey, he talked about contrast. He said contrast is the key to everything.
Because you have the contrast of where they’re at and where they want to go and then your message in the middle there is what creates the desire for them to go from this to this. He talked about an email that’s like, in the course I was studying with Matt Furey it was email marketing, he was like, “Every good email has tons of contrast. Light and dark, happy, sad, fat, skinny, rich, poor. The contrast is what makes it interesting and then it’s what creates the desire to go from the before state to the after state.
That’s the whole key, the contrast. A lot of people never think about that, but as you’re writing the emails, think about the contrast. The before state, again the way Ryan Diess explained it, the before state and after state, which was brilliant. In fact, I had never watched the Chatbooks video through that lens before, but if you watch it through that lens of the before state and the after state you see it over and over again. You see that she’s in the tub at first and she’s the smiling mom in the bathtub, so it’s like, this is a nice thing. Then she stands up and she’s fully clothed and the kids in the tub with her and she’s like, “I fell in while timing him holding his breath.” There’s the before and it keeps transitioning back and forth.
So in any of your communication, whether you’re doing storytelling, or writing emails, or sales letters, or videos, whatever, the contrast is the key. So with the contrast you’re thinking about that, if you told a story about how fit you are, nobody cares, there’s no contrast. It’s like, “I was fat, I was sick, I was unhealthy, I was whatever.” You tell that first and then you tell the contrast to the other thing and the contrast is what creates the desire for somebody to change, which is what they need to have to give you money and that kind of stuff.
So the contrast is a secret, in the before state and the after state, that’s the magic. We gotta rewrite the Expert Secrets book, stop the presses. Let’s add in this thing. So yeah, we just kind of had that epiphany as we were talking. So there you go. Contrast, add it in everything you do to create the before states and the after states. And it’s really fascinating. So watch that. Watch it in the viral videos, watch it in email. As you’re watching good marketers, try to notice the contrast. Because the better the contrast, the more desire is created. So watch how they do it, watch how I do it, watch how other people do it, that’s the secret.
There you go guys, marketing secret number whatever we’re on, hope you guys like that. With that said, it’s time for us to go home and go to bed. So bye everybody.
The fastest way to succeed in anything in life.
On today’s episode Russell talks about finding a coach and actually doing what they say. Here are some of the awesome things to listen for today:
So listen here to find out how to find success by finding a mentor or coach you can trust.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I’m really excited, I know I’m always excited, but today I’m especially excited because yesterday I hired a new coach. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for 5 years like you should have been, I’ve talked about this before in the past. But I’m a big, big, big, big believer in coaching. When I was wrestling I always had a coach, I usually had 3 or 4 coaches. I had a freestyle coach, Greco coach, nutrition coach, strength training coach. But sometimes we get in business and we’re like, “Oh we’re so smart, we don’t need coaches.” And no, you’re wrong.
In fact, it’s kind of funny because a lot of people I know who are really successful in this business for a long time who no longer are, they’re like the last people to go and get coaching. It blows my mind, because they think they know how to do it all. I’m kind of at the top of my game right now, I don’t know, maybe it’ll go higher, but I definitely think I’m 9 ½ minutes into my 10 minutes of fame, what it is 15 minutes of fame, 14 ½ minutes in.
So who knows when this whole thing will go down, but for me I’m at the peak of where I’ve ever wanted or dreamt of being. I’m still trying to find coaches to coach me in different areas of my life and different aspects and different things. I’ve had health coaches, business coaches, all sorts of stuff. Yesterday, actually two days ago I was listening to a podcast, actually the Freedom Fast Lane podcast by Ryan Moran, and he was doing a call with this dude, and the guy coached him through this thing on the podcast. I was like, that was insane. I said out loud that I want that guy to do that thing for me every Monday morning to keep me focused on what I’m doing.
And I’m not going to tell you his name, not because I wouldn’t share, but because I don’t want all you guys trying to hire him, because that’s not his core business. But anyway, the next day I messaged Ryan I was like, “Dude, I need this guys info.” And he’s like, “Oh.” And then I messaged 50 other ways and finally Dave got a hold of him and two hours later I was on a call with him. During this call he literally did a laser coaching thing with me and I was like, “This is so awesome. I want this every week.” And it’s kind of funny, this isn’t his full time gig, doing coaching like that. He’s like, “Well, where do you want to go?” I’m like, “I want to write you a big check for money and then you do this every Monday morning for me.” And he’s like, “Okay.” So I did, I wrote him a check. And now next Monday I have my first actual thing and it’s so exciting.
I’ve had different coaches in my life. I have a coach every Tuesday morning I meet with more on like, it’s Tara Williams, who is an energy coach, but it kind of goes in different directions, from spiritual to physical to mental to business to relationships, all over the place. So that’s one that touches on different areas of my life, but this is very specific on focus and intent and I’m so excited. I’m excited for that.
I wish you guys could see how I was jumping around, crazy. I was so excited to give someone money to be able to coach me. Because it gets hard, the different levels you get to, it’s harder to find a coach who’s there, who can take you through a different aspect, so it’s just exciting for me. I’m so excited. In fact, that’s why as a coach, I obviously coach a lot of entrepreneurs, I don’t want my students or friends, whatever you want to call them. I want to keep progressing myself so that they keep having something to tap into, if that makes sense.
I’ve had a lot of coaches throughout the years, that I came in and really quickly we met and then surpassed and I’m like, I can’t get stuff out of it. I don’t want my people ever feeling that way. That’s why I’m always pushing myself, pushing myself, pushing myself just so that I’m always as sharp as possible so I can keep serving and giving and coaching.
But anyway, I’m just excited and what’s interesting, and this is the point of the podcast, not that you guys care that I hired a coach. But more so it’s because at the last Inner Circle meeting last week, we had 4 days of Inner Circle and I got 4 days next week too, I’m so excited. But what’s interesting, I watched a pattern. It was such an interesting pattern.
First off, people in the inner circle are people who, they hear what I say, they do it and then they succeed. It’s really interesting. They hear what I say, they do it, and then they have success. Hear, do succeed. Hear, do, succeed. When I was wrestling, I remember one of my coaches telling me, “You’re one of the most coachable people I’ve ever had.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well you hear what I say and then you go and do it. I literally between matches will show you your level was too high. You need to lower your levels, be moving more. Next match you’re doing that. Most people I tell them that over and over and it takes weeks or months or years to even attempt it. I tell you something and you just do it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, isn’t that how it should work?” You hear someone you trust, that you hired, that you are paying to be a coach, someone who is your coach, you hear them, you then do that thing, and you make money. Or you hear that thing, do it and then wrestle better. That’s the process.
So the key first off, you gotta tap into somebody that you trust. Someone who you know is not going to lead you astray, someone who knows more than you do. So when you hear them, you’re not second guessing should I do that, should I not? You gotta pick the mentor that you have 100% faith and trust in. It could be me, someone else, I don’t care, just pick somebody where you’re like, I have absolute faith in that person’s opinion. Therefore I will do whatever they say. I will hear and then I will do and then I’ll have success.
But what’s interesting is during this whole inner circle, again, I’m watching and most of these people, that’s who they are. They hear, they do, they succeed. That’s why there are able to afford 25 grand to come hang out with us a couple of times a year. That’s why they’re having success. But as I was watching, not all of them, but probably 60% of our inner circle members are also coaches in different markets, different industries, things like that. And what’s interesting is almost all of them said “I’ve got these students and they just hear what I say and do it and they have success. But I’ve got all these other ones who don’t.” And I was like, it’s so fascinating to me that people that have success what do they do. They heard, they did, they had success. The one’s who didn’t, they heard, they questioned, they thought about it, they flip flopped, they over analyzed, they studied something else, they did this, they….they get stuck in this thing in the middle that they don’t really hear.
And it’s just so fascinating for me. Yesterday when I heard, two days ago when I heard that podcast and the second I heard it I was like, “I heard it, now I’m going to go do so I can be successful.” How am I going to do it? I know I’m going to forget or it’s going to be hard so I’m going to pay someone so I can do it. So I heard, did, boom now I guarantee you guys will see in the next 6 months, the changes in my company and hopefully in me personally because of this coaching.
Again, I could have heard the podcast and thought about it and tried things, but no I heard it, I’m going to go do it and then I’m going to be successful. So if anything you get from this, there is a pattern of people who are successful in all areas of life. The pattern is number one, they find the mentor, the person, the coach, whatever they believe to get them where they are, and then they put on blinders. They hear, they do, they succeed. Hear, do, succeed. Hear, do, succeed. That’s it.
And if you’re not successful, something happened. Number one you picked the wrong mentor, so you picked someone you’re not really trusting or they have bad advice, bad strategy whatever. So if that’s the case, pick somebody that has the right strategy that you trust. That’s number one, so you do it. Number two, you have to listen to them. Now listening, I said this to one of my friends one time. There’s two types of listeners in the world, those who listen and those who wait to be heard. And a lot of you guys are hearing stuff, but you’re waiting to be…..You’re trying to inject this thing in the middle, and I don’t want you guys being the people who are waiting to be heard. You are hiring a coach so you can listen.
So stop, get the right person with the right strategy, pay them whatever it takes, then listen. Listen. Even if you think you know a better way, you read a blog post or a book or someone who has a different…it doesn’t matter. There’s a million ways to skin a cat. Pick a strategy from a person and then listen to what they say, and then whatever they say, do it. That’s it, just do it. And then what will happen? You will have success. Listen, do, succeed. Listen, do, succeed. It’s a pretty simple strategy. It’s somewhere between the listening and the succeeding we get caught up trying to think or over analyze or whatever it is.
In fact, it’s interesting, people that are really good at school typically, the reason I think they don’t succeed in this kind of world is because they listen and they analyze and think….it’s good to think for yourself, but you’re hiring someone who already thought through these things for you. Like this dude yesterday, I don’t know, I’m guessing he was surprised at how he said something and I’m like, “Okay, I’m doing it. Done.” I listen, I heard, I did. I’m not like, “Well, my company is bigger than yours and I did this…” or whatever. No, I listen, I do, I succeed. I trusted him enough to give him money, therefore I’m trusting his strategy with 100% certainty that this is the way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have picked him, I wouldn’t have paid him, I wouldn’t have whatever. I chose that person, therefore I will listen with 100%, I have 100% certainty that everything he says is going to be truth, therefore I will listen, I will do and I will succeed.
So this message is mostly for those of you guys who are struggling. My guess is that somewhere between this little chain that you’re missing. You picked the wrong person to tap into a strategy. But if you’re listening to this, you’re listening to me, so obviously you picked the right thing. So you got the right strategy to listen, do, and succeed. Boom, that’s it.
I look at Brandon and Kaelin, literally Brandon and Kaelin come to every event, they’re at everything we do. They listen to every podcast, they’re probably listening to this right now smiling and saying, “Russell keeps dropping our name again.” They listen to everything. They picked somebody they trusted, they listen, and they do. I will literally be onstage at an event talking about a concept and I get off stage, and Brandon’s like, “hey that thing you just said, I just launched it.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “yeah, While you were talking I did it.” He’s listening, he did it, he’ll succeed. That’s why their company is going…..
Everyone else in the room is sitting there listening, listening, taking notes, thinking about how cool it would be, and then they hang out in networking and they’re talking and….No, Brandon is there listening, doing and that’s why they’re so successful.
So for you, look at that chain, there’s four elements. Pick the right mentor with the strategy and have absolute certainty in what they say, listen to what they’re saying, again listen, not waiting to be heard. Listen, then do it. Whatever they say, don’t even… Just do it. Just jump off the cliff. I trusted this person, therefore I will jump off the cliff if they tell me to. Just do it. And then get success. That’s it. That’s it, it is really that easy. So easy. It’s insanely easy. I don’t know why we keep complicating this. So don’t complicate it.
If you do this thing and don’t have success, there’s somewhere in here, either you didn’t hear it right, or you didn’t do it right, or you picked the wrong strategy. If you get the right strategy up front, you listen and you do, then you’ll have success. It’s inevitable. You can’t not succeed.
So there you go guys, I hope that helps. It should help you, but it should also help the people you’re coaching. It should help, so many ways. Understand that guys, that’s the key. That’s all I got guys. I’m heading into the office today. It’s Wednesday, I got a lot more fun stuff to do today, I’m excited. Appreciate yo all for listening and subscribing to the podcast. If you’re not subscribed yet, go to iTunes.com and subscribe or I guess marketingsecrets.com there’s a link to the iTunes, that might be easier. And then please rate, review, let us know, share this, if you got any benefit from this. Appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything and I will talk you all again soon. Bye everybody.
All the little things you’re not doing to get more traffic now.
On this episode Russel talks about the big theme in the company right now, which is going from ten million dollars a year to a hundred million. He talks about what they are doing to be able to build a blueprint to help others do what they have done. Here are some cool things in this episode:
Listen to all this and more, and don’t forget to get your tickets for Funnel Hacking Live before they are gone.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast, formerly known as Marketing In Your Car. Right now we are back in the car, so I feel a little nostalgic. Going to a dentist appointment today, starting in 6 minutes. It’s probably a 10 minute drive and traffic is literally stopped. My wife told me not to take Chinden and I did anyway, it’s my own fault. Should have listened. Anyway, that’s what’s going on today.
Alright everybody, so I hope everyone out there is having an awesome time. It’s been really fun this week. If you listen along as we go, two weeks ago we had a FHAT event, and then the viral video event, which went awesome. Then last week I had 4 days of Inner Circle meetings and a one day consult, so last week I didn’t even get to do any of my own work. And yesterday was the first day I got to get back and actually do my own thing, which was awesome and exciting and amazing and I’m so grateful for it.
So it was fun to kind of get back to work. And it’s been interesting, as I’ve been talking to Inner Circle a lot, I keep telling people phases of this. It’s going 0 to a million, a million to ten, ten to 100, and if you listen to me talking about this, it’s going to be a big theme at Funnel Hacking Live this year. By the way, tickets for that are going on sale this week. So they’ll be at Funnelhackinglive.com, we should have some ticket sales. We pre-sold over a thousand tickets already, so we don’t have a lot of tickets left, but those are going on sale this week. By the time you’re listening to this, it might be live. So if you want to go to Funnel Hacking Live, go to funnelhackinglive.com.
Anyway, so that’s been the big theme in my Inner Circle, a big them in my company, everything like that. Yesterday was the first time I had a chance to really focus on the traffic part of it, which is fun because going from 0 to a million is all about figuring out your what and your how. What are you selling and how are you selling it? The sun is bright in my eyes, sorry. And after you figure that out, you know you figured it out because you go from 0 to a million dollars over night as soon as you figure that out. So figuring out the what and the how is the first phase.
After you figure that out, the second phase is scaling that. So it’s coming down to building out the infrastructure. Actually let me step back. 0 to a million is everything we talk about in Expert Secrets, finding out what you’re selling, who you are, what you message is, finding your voice, etc, etc. And number two is when you go from a million to ten, it’s all about basically the Dotcom Secrets principles, building out a value ladder, front ends, back ends, maximizing the journey and the process and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s the second phase. The third phase is going from ten to a hundred million, and that’s where we’re at right now. Some of you may or may not know, I bought trafficsecrets.com from John Reese, and that’s going to be, I don’t know if it’s the next book, but it’s the next book in the series. It’s going to be all about that part, how to scale the traffic, so going from ten to a hundred million.
So what’s fun is that yesterday was the first time we had a chance to sit down in a room all day and plan and map it and really build out that process. What’s interesting, as I look at our business, to this point. We’ve done well this year, it doesn’t matter. It’s grown really, really well. We’re doing some pretty good things, but what’s been interesting, if you look at how we’ve done things up to this point, the focus is all on the funnel. So we build the funnel and when that funnel’s done we go and drive traffic, we go and buy ads and do those kind of things like that.
Whereas this new phase, the sun is so bright in my eyes….The new phase we’re going into, which is scaling beyond, it’s all about getting more people into the front of the funnel. Because after you get people in front of the funnel, the structure, all the Dotcom Secrets, front end, back end funnels, value ladder, all that stuff’s already built out. You don’t need to keep adding stuff there. Now it’s just about dumping more fuel into the fire. So that’s the kind of phase we’re in now, which is an exciting, fun phase.
So what’s interesting, we were mapping this thing out. I wish I could show you guys all the pre funnel stuff. Most people are like, here’s my funnel, what’s the ad I’m going to buy? The process we’re working on and we’re building out internally is there’s four phases that happen before you ever get to the ad. There’s the research phase. There’s a whole bunch of research we’re going into, keywords, headlines, articles, who are we trying to be. Funnel hacking deep, so that’s the research phase.
From there we have a bunch of stuff, deliverables, based on that, here’s the 30 or 60 or 90 headlines we need to create videos for. Here’s the 15000 word article we need to create. Here’s the title and keywords we’re focusing on. And then here’s…..it’s going through all that stuff, the deliverables. Then after that, we have to produce all that stuff. So the third phase is going and, if it’s me, it’s doing a billion videos…. I got off the busy street…..doing a billion videos, writing the content, all this stuff is the production phase.
And then when the production phase is over, then it goes to the asset phase, which is like each video turns into 5 thumbnail, or 5 quote cards. A YouTube video, Facebook video, all the actual assets that need to be created. And then from there it’s handed to the promotional team, which is phase 5 and the promotional team takes all this stuff and uses it to promote the funnel.
So it’s crazy, so exciting. It honestly blows my mind that we built our company as far as we have, based on literally us building a really good funnel and turning on ads and that’s it. We’re missing…. again it comes back to the tip of the iceberg. We’re doing the tip, but we’re missing the rest. So now we’re coming back and doing the rest of it.
And I really think, outside of there’s a lot of infrastructure and people and other things we need in place as we’re growing from…to a hundred million and beyond. So we’re working on those kind of things. But what’s interesting, from the traffic side, that’s what we’re building out now. Building out the systems and it’s exciting.
It is a process starting right now, it started yesterday and it will culminate probably in the next 18 months in a book called Traffic Secrets, so it’ll be showing you guys behind the scenes of what it ended up becoming. Oh crap, I gotta beat this light…..So that is kind of what….sorry you guys see how good of a driver I am. I always get messages after this, “Russell, you shouldn’t be driving while you’re talking.” I’m like, I got my hands. I’m good.
Anyway, so that’s the exciting thing, as we’re kind of building this out. As I’ve kind of perfected the model, proven it, we’ll use it to go from 70-80 million to 700 million, then we’ll have a good blueprint to show everyone, this is Traffic Secrets, this is the foundation behind it, which is kind of cool. Anyway, that’s kind of what’s happening over here. And it’s exciting and fun. The only place we really talk about this publicly, some of you guys are in our Fill Your Funnel course, that’s where we’re really going deep into this and kind of mapping out the strategy and this process and this plan. But we’re trying to figure it out, all internally on our side.
So as we keep getting it better, we’ll be publishing it there, until we got it all perfected and it becomes a book. But I want you guys thinking more about that. Think more about all the front end stuff that you do to get traffic into your funnels. Most of its just, you spend all this time and effort getting the funnel right and then we turn on ads and that’s it. There’s so much more that goes into it before.
Anyway, that’s kind of what’s happening here. So a couple of other exciting developments. One thing is, if you’ve been listening to the Marketing In Your Car podcast for any amount of time, or Marketing Secrets for a long time before that, I have somebody, a secret spy right now, going through the past episodes….is this the right road I’m supposed to go on? I think it is…. Categorizing all of it, we’re going to be turning this crazy podcast, we’re going to take out all the crap and the fluff, the ones that were just me rambling incoherently, and finding all the best and putting them into chronological order, not chronological, the right order, and actually making a book called Marketing Secrets.
If you can’t tell, I’m kind of obsessed recently with making books. We’ve got the Expert Secrets book, which took two years of my life, the cookbook, which was The Funnel Hacker Cookbook. If you haven’t got that, go to funnelhackerscookbook.com or funnelcookbook.com, it’s actually easier to remember, funnelcookbook.com. And in fact right now, I think it’s $10 plus shipping or something like that, to get a 350 page, spiral bound cookbook, which is insane.
But I’m really into the whole book thing. I think books create legacy more than anything else. And at this point in my career it feels like that’s what I’m getting drawn to, stuff that’s legacy as opposed to promotional stuff. So you may see a couple more books coming out in the next few years, and hopefully they turn out good. I’ve tried to write two really good books, I think the first two turned out good, I’m proud of them. So hopefully you guys will like the other ones.
But this is one will be a fun book that will be kind of like an ongoing series called Marketing Secrets, where every three years I can publish a new book, it’s like okay here are the next 400 marketing secrets that came out of me driving in my car back and forth. Here’s idea after idea after idea.
You know the first two books, Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets have been very much process based. So it’s like, you have to go through step one, step two, step three, step four, kind of like that. Where Marketing Secrets the goal would be more like, flip it open and just grab it like, “What’s secret 27? Oh cool, urgency and Scarcity. I could use that here. Here is marketing secret 292…” Anyway, that’s kind of the game plan with that book, so it’ll be fun. So that will probably be the next book and then I got this other cool….so many cool things.
So anyway, that’s all I got you guys. I’m almost at the dentist. So I’m going to go hang out with him. Appreciate you all for listening, subscribing. If you’re not subscribed yet go to iTunes and subscribe. I think last time I checked we’re number 3 or 4 top business podcast in the world, so thank you for that, hopefully we can keep it ranked up high. But yeah, come listen, subscribe and hang out with us and we’ll keep giving you the goods. Alright guys, appreciate you all, talk to you soon. Bye.