The interesting truth behind what happens when you shift from being a generalist to a specialist.
On this episode Russell talks about how he struggled to grow his business until he was able to specialize on a particular piece of it. He also gives examples of other people he knows who have been able to do the same thing. Here are some of the other awesome things to look forward to in this episode:
So listen here to see why it’s good to be a specialist.
---Transcript---
Hey what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So excited to have you guys here tonight, I’ve got something really fun I want to share with you.
Alright so, I’m not sure the best way to kind of pre-set this up. But I want to share this with you because I think this is why a lot of people struggle. In fact, looking backwards now, it’s always easier to look hindsight. But looking backwards, I think this is one of the reasons why I struggled for so long, for probably almost a decade. The reason why is because I was trying to do the right things. I was trying to figure out how to provide value for my customers. So I was learning all sorts of things.
So as I was learning everything, I was trying to teach these things, trying to share things, which is good. I think a lot of times people like us, who are creators and who like to give and serve, it’s just kind of our nature to do that. So I don’t think it was bad, necessarily, but what happened, I started becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none.
I remember that when I first started getting into the internet marketing business and teaching stuff, I looked around at the marketplace at the time, and there were people that were specifically good at one thing. Jeff Walker was good at product launches, Frank Kern was good as mass control, they had all these different people, I can’t remember all the names right now. Perry Marshall was PPC, Brad Fallon was SEO and everyone is good at their one thing.
Then for me, I started learning all these things. John Carlton was copywriting, and I looked at all these people and they had one thing, but for me I was like, I was good at all those things. I knew how to do SEO and I knew how to do pay per click, I knew how to do the copywriting, I knew how to do product launches and I knew how to do all these different things. So I would try to sell myself, I would teach, I could do everything for you guys. And I would try to show them how to do everything.
And what’s interesting, as I tried to show people how to do everything, it was hard to really grow and scale my empire, or whatever you want to call it. And it was always weird to me because it was like, oh you can go there and get that one thing from that person, but you can get everything from me, come to me. And I think just because I loved it all, and I geeked out and I wanted share it all. But because no one could ever look at Russell and be like, “Russell’s the guy who does this.” They were like, “Russell is this guy that’s teaching all sorts of stuff.” Because I didn’t specialize, no one ever wanted to come to me. It was really interesting, and it was always frustrating to me because I was just like, I felt like I was as good if not better than most of these people, but because I didn’t specialize it was harder to get people in.
So that was me for a decade. I struggled because I knew I was good at all these different things, so because of that I wanted to do them all. Now fast forward to four or five years ago, whenever we started making this transition and as we launched Clickfunnels, I kind of became the funnel person. And it was strategic, because I was Clickfunnels it was like, “oh he’s the guy who does funnels.” And I started talking about it more, started sharing it more. I became obsessed with just that one piece.
So because of that, I started just going deep into funnels. I think that if you ask anybody now, they look at me as, “Russell’s the funnel guy.” And I wasn’t the first funnel guy, I wasn’t….honestly, I’d been teaching funnels for a decade prior to that right. But for some reason, it was just one of the things in my tool belt, but it wasn’t the thing. But when it became the thing, it changed everything in my business. All the sudden people who wanted to learn funnels came to me.
And I watched as my empire, my brand, my whatever you want to call it started growing dramatically. Now after I became the guy at this one thing, I was the guy at funnel building, what’s cool is I bring my audience is, but I can still do and still serve them in all the other things. But it all comes down to one core thing, funnel building, that was my thing. I was the guy about funnels. And then I can teach traffic, but instead of teaching traffic it was fill your funnel. Here’s how we fill your funnel full of people.
I could still teach copywriting, but it wasn’t just copywriting, it was funnel scripts. Here’s how we do the copy for your funnels. I can still teach traffic generators, all these different pieces that I was good at. I can still teach them all, but they are in the context of this one thing, funnel building. And when I did that, you’ve seen how things grew. I was able to build, we were able to build software around it and trainings and everything else. Masterminds, and coaching programs all around this one thing, which was the funnel.
Now once again, inside of that I can teach all the things I did before because now I was known for one thing that was the key.
So that was kind of the first thing I wanted to share with you guys. But it goes deeper than that. Today I had a chance, my wife’s out of town at a funeral for her grandma, so I was home with the boys, so I spent a lot of time with them, which was fun. Then I also went and worked out on my own and kind of just had some time to myself too, so I was listening to podcasts, and one of the podcasts I was listening a lot to was Dana Derricks. His podcasts and one of his books and stuff like that, and it’s been interesting because I’ve known Dana now for probably two, maybe three years.
He joined my inner circle and he spoke at Funnel Hacking Live this year. What’s interesting, when I met Dana, he was famous at the time for copywriting for Amazon listings. He was charging people 10 or 20 grand to write a listing in Amazon. And that was his thing. It was good, he was making really good money, but it’s one off things and he got tired of writing. So he was like, “I’m going to write a book and teach people how to do what I do.”
So he wrote this book and then he was like, instead of selling the book for really, really cheap, I’m going to sell it for really expensive. So he started selling these books teaching people how to do Amazon copywriting for like $500-$1000 per book. And started doing better, gave him leverage, started making more money.
But still the marketplace, it wasn’t the big market that he wanted. So then he transitioned from there to teach people, “You can write these really expensive books like I did.” So he created a book that he started selling for like $2500 that taught people how to write books and sell them for $1000 at a time. And that was a thing and it was doing well, but I don’t think it was ever huge.
And then how he started selling that book, he got a strategy that I think he got from me, and I got it from Chet Holmes and it was this concept of the Dream 100. Chet Holmes, there’s one chapter in his book called the Dream 100 and then inside of my training, I think I’ve referenced it four or five times, I’m a big believer in the Dream 100. In fact, in my book Traffic Secrets, the foundation of that is the Dream 100, which is kind of cool.
But then Dana took it and put it on steroids, he wrote a whole book about it, started doing it, did it for his own stuff and then started doing it for other people. And that became this new, if you look at Dana now, he has become the dream 100 guy. He has a whole back end thing for, I don’t know, 30 or 40 or 50 thousand dollars, where he actually does the dream 100 for you, and all these crazy things.
He’s got his book on dream 100 and now that’s become his thing. He may transition again in the future, who knows. But for right now, that’s becoming his thing. He’s got the book on front end, he’s got the done for you or done with you on the back end, all these things, and he’s going deep, deep into this one little piece. This one piece that was a chapter in Chet Holmes book, it was a chapter of what I share and he’s taken it and gone deep and built this huge business out of it now, and it’s all just because he is now the dream 100 guy and he’s focusing really, really tight on that, which is really fascinating to me.
I took my, here’s my scope of everything I could possibly do and when I took one piece of it and became the guy, when deep on that, that’s when everything blew up for me. For Dana, I think it’s the same thing. There was copywriting and then there was writing and all these different things, but when it became dream 100 traffic, this is how you get traffic, this is the best way to get traffic, the only way to get traffic, focus on the dream 100, dream 100, dream 100. That’s when things blew up. Now he’s got his dream 100 con coming out, which is a big event that he’s doing and all these things, but he’s going deep in that one vein and that’s where now people are coming in, because he’s the guy that does dream 100.
Anyway, I think that’s so cool. I saw recently also, Steven Larsen’s sister used to work for us, Marie Larsen, and she, and I don’t know everything, kind of her whole story. But what’s she’s done really good, I believe she was helping Steven with his podcast and getting published or whatever and she decided, “I’m going to become the podcast person.” So she went down and was like, “I’m going to come down and become the best person at podcasting.” So she did that. “I’m going to teach people to do podcasts, I’m going to help them do podcasts, I’m going to build a service around it. I’ll do my podcast about podcasts.” All this stuff, she started focusing on that one little piece, that one little sliver of the market, and because she’s now becoming that person people are coming to her and she’s helping them do podcasts.
And she went from not making any money online to overnight to making, I have no idea her revenue, so I’m guessing, $5000, 10000 a month or more and just….because that became the thing.
Another good one is Giada Golden who is a super cool person. She was doing relationship coaching and other things and having success in different pieces, but inside of the Dotcom Secrets book, there’s one little chapter about soap opera sequences and how to write these soap opera sequences, so she took that piece and started doing it for herself and then started doing it for friends and started having success and started geeking out on going deeper, deeper, deeper now.
She’s like, “I’m just going to be the person who writes these really amazing email sequences.” And then she did it for one person and it blew up for them and then someone else, and someone else. And everyone started hearing about it, and right now she’s making, again I don’t know her exact numbers, so I’m probably not even, I know it’s well. I know it’s more than $25,000 a month she’s making writing emails for people and going deep into that. And she hasn’t even created a course or training or anything, she’s just doing this service and making more than a doctor makes because she went super deep on that one little skill, that one little piece.
So for you guys, I think a lot of times we’re trying to become so good at everything, teach everything, do everything and that kind of thing, but look at the whole market, look at all the stuff out there and just pick the sliver that you could become the person at. That you could go the deepest, that you could be the best in the world at that one little thing. Figure out that one little piece and go deep. That’s the magic, it’s not in being a generalist who’s good at everything.
You can do that, and you should do that, because it’s good to have your skill set there, but the magic comes when you specialize in a little thing. Look at doctors for example, the more a doctor specializes in a thing, the more money they can charge. I’ve got a lot of people who live around me that are doctors and the ones that go to more medical school to specialize in a tinier thing, make more money than the generalists who are able to fix kind of everything.
So that’s the mindset I want you guys thinking through. In your market, how do you become the person, the sliver, the one little piece that you’re going to own, it’s going to be your thing, that you do better than everyone else, that you can geek out on. So when someone’s like, “What does so and so do?” “Oh he’s/she’s the person that does podcasting.” “..that does email sequencing.” “…that does weight loss for teenagers.” Whatever it is in your market. What’s that thing? Find that thing.
And don’t be nervous, “Oh it’s such a small segment.” The smaller it is, the more specific, the more specialized you become, the more valuable you are. When I became, when I was Russell Brunson, the guy who knew every type of marketing known to man, I was a generalist and I didn’t get paid what I feel like I was worth. When I specialized and became the funnel guy, that’s when my income exploded.
After you understand that, then it’s like you can layer on other things within the context of that, but you do it all from the same foundation. Like I said, with funnel building with me, that’s my thing but I can lay on copywriting, I can lay on traffic, lay on these other pieces still but they’re all tied. You’ll notice I pretty much have funnel in every one of my podcasts now. Funnel or secret, those two words are mine, they’re in everything, because those are the things that tie back to the one thing I’m the best in the world at.
So for you, just think about that. What is the thing you can become the best in the world at, and the smaller…you think about Dream 100 that’s such a small thing. For me it was a page and a half of one of my books, that’s as much effort I put into that. I wouldn’t have thought you could build a huge business with it. Because someone took that piece, that sliver and went super, super deep, boom. Dana’s building a multi-million dollar a year business out of it.
Giada took Soap opera sequences, that one little piece, five or six pages that she learned and then went deep with it, boom $25,000+ a month coming into her, just for writing emails. She’s beginning this journey that’s going to turn into a multi-million dollar business by actually doing this service and training and teaching all this other stuff around it. And then with others as well.
So just think through that you guys. Just start thinking aobut that for yourselves. You don’t have to be good at all these amazing things, just pick the little sliver that you’re going to become the best in the world at and go deep there. And the deeper you go, the more you master that craft, the more people are going to come to you because they’re going to want that thing because you’re the best in the world at that piece.
So I hope that helps. I appreciate you guys all. Have an amazing night and we’ll talk to you guys again soon. Bye everybody.
Anne Frank house… Operation Underground Railroad… and what YOU can do NOW to help save children from slavery. This IS our problem, we can help.
On today’s episode Russell talks about going to a Tony Robbins event in Amsterdam and being able to speak there. He also speaks about the emotional reaction he had while visiting the Anne Frank house and how it relates to another project he is currently involved in. Here are some of the insightful things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out how sharing the message of Operation Underground Railroad, you can help save a life.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I just got back from speaking at a Tony Robbins event and got back from the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, and I got some really cool stuff to share with you guys.
Hey real quick, before I start this episode I just wanted to let you know that for some reason the recording went kind of strange on it, but I thought the content was really good and impactful and important. So instead of just deleting it and not posting it, I thought I would share it with you anyway. For some reason it happened on this episode as well as the next episode. Just letting you know that. I apologize for the bad audio, but I promise you it’s worth it if you listen and get through some of the little audio issues. Thanks so much, I hope you enjoy this episode.
Alright, so the last 20-25 however many hours, I have been flying home from an amazing trip, and I was planning on doing a whole bunch of podcasts on the trip but between jet lag and speaking and slides and then traveling and then more jet lag, and then more exciting things, I just never had a chance to sit there on my phone and check in with you guys and share some cool stuff.
So I’m home now, I just got back and I’ve been out working out and it’s a beautiful day and I wanted to walk around my track for a little bit and thought, you know what, what better time than now to kind of jump on and kind of share some of my cool thoughts from this trip.
So first off, the trip started with me speaking at Tony Robbins’ business mastery event, which is pretty cool. It’s actually, everyone there kept saying, “Is this the first time you’ve spoken at Tony’s event?” And actually no, it’s the second time. The first time I spoke was actually Business Mastery in Fiji probably 7, 8, almost 9 years ago now, dang. I can’t believe it was 9 years ago. It was before Aiden was born, and he’s turning 8 in a couple of weeks.
So anyway, we’re out there and spoke at that event and then since then, Tony and I have done some things kind of on and off, but never really connected, he never had me speak at one of his events again. And then the last two Funnel Hacking Live’s Tony spoke at, and actually after the last one he messaged me and asked if I wanted to come and speak at Business Mastery, but the dates didn’t work out, so I had to say no last year. But luckily they offered it to me again this year. And I thought it would be kind of fun to come out there and see these people. And to be completely honest, my real motivation is I just wanted to show off to Tony Robbins.
They asked me what I charge to come in and speak, and I think they were shocked to know that my fees were about the same as Tony’s fees, which makes me feel good. I told them basically for me it was $250 grand a day. So we got two days of travel in between so about $750 or so. But I was like, “Or, instead of paying me, I would come and let me sell and I would do it for free. You just gotta cover my flights out there.” and luckily they took door number two, because that’s all I really wanted to do anyway.
So I went out there and had a chance to speak and offer Clickfunnels to his audience. He wanted me to speak more on digital marketing, so I had to kind of change the presentation up a little bit, but for the most part, it was similar because it’s the same message people need to know to understand our world, funnel building, funnel hacking, driving traffic, all that kind of stuff. So I customized it for them, but at the end made a very similar offer to what most of you guys have got and invested in the past.
Hopefully it’s not too windy out here, I’m going to step out so it doesn’t effect this podcast. Anyway, that was kind of what we did, which was awesome. And sales went great. I think we closed 23% of the room, which typically speaking, in European markets, it’s way harder just because of the culture. People aren’t used to jumping up and running to the back. But I was proud to say that I did get a table rush, which is the first time I’ve ever gotten a table rush in Europe, which was really cool. And I sold 23% of the room. When all was said and done it was somewhere between 750-800 thousand dollars in sales, which was awesome.
So that was a good, and again my whole goal was to show off to Tony so that he’ll be like, “Man, you should speak at all our events.” In fact my goal, I’m going to set this out there into the world, my goal is to actually do Funnel Hacks presentation at UPW with 10,000 people in the room because I think that’d be way cooler. But I needed to start here. So that’s kind of what happened and it was fun. I got to see Tony speak, got to see him sell his stuff, and then my thing.
And then after that we’re like, let’s go see the Netherlands, see what’s here. So the next morning we went down to Amsterdam, the event was in Rotterdam, that’s where we spoke at, then we went to Amsterdam because we wanted to see that. It’s funny because most people go to Amsterdam for totally different reasons than we do. In fact, I had Julie Stoian and a couple of other people who were just like, “You know, everyone else goes to Amsterdam for the red light district and to get the legal stuff. And you guys go and didn’t do any of that stuff. You guys are such nerds.” I’m like, “I know, it’s the coolest.”
So a bunch of Mormon guys down there in Amsterdam trying to experience the city as well as we could. We had a great time, we rented bikes, if you’ve ever been there, it’s insane. A million bikes going crazy, it was nuts. We had such a good time. Anyway, I digress.
The coolest part, and this is what I wanted to share with you, we wanted to go to Anne Frank house. Last time I was in Amsterdam I didn’t even, so dumb, I didn’t even realize it was there. And we went on a boat tour, my wife and I and we saw it and we tried to get in and it was sold out. And so this trip, same thing, a month ago we tried to book tickets and apparently we were too late. So they sell out like a month in advance. So we thought maybe we’ll go down there and just bribe someone to let us come in.
So we went down there the first day and like, “Hey, we will give you any amount of money to let us come in.” and they’re like, “No.” We’re like, “Come on, there’s got to be some entrepreneur here who wants my money, let me in.” and they’re like, “No, but tonight at 7-9 if there are any open tickets they go online. So go there and you might be able to get some.” So I had Melanie, my assistant here in Boise, we messaged her so she went on. She’s refreshing every 5 seconds trying to get the tickets, and luckily for us she got four tickets.
So the next morning we woke up and went to the Anne Frank memorial. And man, there’s just something about places like that. I know the first thing for me, that blew my mind, how it wasn’t that long ago. It was like 70, 80 years ago, something like that this whole experience happened. It was not that long ago. And that was just the first thing. And then as you go into the home and you go into the place where they had the bookshelf you pulled out and it’s a stairway up into the attack and you see this place that she’s imprisoned for two years. And they made it almost to the end, I think like 3 or 4 months before the war ended they got caught and she ended up dying, I believe of Typhoid fever, in one of the concentration camps.
But for two years the Lord preserved her in this spot. And during that time inspired her to write her thoughts down. So she’s keeping this journal and writing these things. And as I’m going through this I’m like, “Why…” because I don’ tknow about you, but I don’t believe that God just does random things and it’s like, oh that was weird. I think things are planned and calculated and figured out and I think that he protected her so she could leave this message in this journal, and even protected the journal, the diary in a way that when her father came back later was able to still find it and publish it.
You look at just her little story and her little piece. She was 15 years old when she passed away, she wasn’t even, she was 15 or less and this diary has become such a powerful thing for so many people. I looked at a month before we couldn’t even get in because so many want to come and just experience in just a little way what she went through.
And what’s crazy, I hadn’t even connected these two things together until I was in the room. The night before we had just launched our new, the new prelaunch for Operation Underground Railroad documentary that we showed at Funnel Hacking Live, so we do this big launch, getting everybody to come register and just share the message, which is just kind of a cool special thing anyway.
So we’re doing that the night before, and the next day we’re in the Anne Frank home, and I’m sitting there, and I had this impression while I’m sitting there. I’m like, Anne Frank lived through this slavery. It wasn’t the same type of slavery that these kids are going through, right. It wasn’t sex slavery and it wasn’t some of these other horrible things that are happening to these other kids, but she was in slavery. And God preserved her and preserved this record that she created so that we could read it and understand what it feels like to be in the depths of hell like she was, in hopes that we will feel that and understand it and be humans, be compassionate.
And as I’m sitting there, I was like, she was a prisoner, she was in slavery. And as I’m sitting in this room experiencing it and feeling her spirit. I don’t know about you, but I could feel her spirit in this room and you’re just like, realizing that there’s nothing we could do for Anne Frank, but because she went through this thing, because we’re able to feel her spirit, because we’re able to feel what she felt in just a little piece because of her and her diary and these things. It should give us motivation, how do we first off, make sure this doesn’t happen. And second off, how do we relieve other people of this pain? There are other people going through this slavery.
And all the sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks and I don’t know why it hadn’t, the two things hadn’t crossed my mind before but it was like, oh my gosh. That’s what’s happening at Operation Underground Railroad. There are these kids in slavery and I think, especially here in America, I think most of us think that slavery ended when Lincoln was president and it was over. But the reality is it didn’t, it hasn’t ended.
Tim Ballard and his organization, Operation Underground Railroad they believe there’s 2-3 million children in some type of slavery right now. Either sex slavery, working slaveries for their organs, it’s crazy. Anne Frank was one person. Imagine what you would have done if you could have went and saved Anne Frank. Imagine that feeling, just for a second. You save Anne Frank, what happens to her and her life and her soul? Can you imagine what that would have felt like?
What’s crazy now with Operation Underground Railroad, I’m looking, it’s the same thing. We are literally saving these children. We’re saving someone like Anne Frank who doesn’t have a voice, who doesn’t have the ability to fight and do anything. We have this ability where we can with hardly any money at all, liberate these amazing children. And man, just got super emotional for me when I was there.
So afterwards we went outside and did a Facebook live. I jumped on and said, “I want everyone to understand this connection between Anne Frank and the slavery she was in, and Operation Underground Railroad and the slavery that millions of children are in and realizing that you have a voice, you have the ability to share this message. Share with other people. Talk about it, share the documentary. Donate money if you’re able to. If not, share this message because you have the ability to save someone, to save a human beings life. Just like an Anne Frank.
“If that doesn’t touch you, just go and read her diary. Read it, read her words, read what a little 14, 15 year person who’s experiencing this, what she felt and what she had a chance to go through and realize that you can liberate a captive person just like that.”
So that was my big takeaway, the whole weekend was amazing. But I really think that God wanted me there in Amsterdam to feel that, and to experience that because it makes what we’re doing so much more real. So for all of you guys who are listening who haven’t yet, go to ourfilm.org, go and watch the trailer or the documentary so you can understand a little bit about what’s happening. Get on the prelaunch list and then share this message with as many people as you can. If you have a podcast, podcast about it. If you are big on twitter, tweet it. If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, if you have an email. Any means you have to get this message out there, share it.
If you knew there was a little girl in Amsterdam hiding in a closet, and you were to share the message you could save her, would you do it? That’s literally what this is. About $2500 saves a child from slavery. So if you’re able to donate $2500 do it. If not share this. Man, you share it with 10, 20 ,30, 50 and each of those people share $10 or $20, that’s enough money to liberate someone who’s in captivity. Your voice does matter.
We’re in a day and an age where we have the ability to get messages out, and people, we always think if I lived then, I would have done this and this, and I would have helped them and done all these things. The reality is you are living in that time and you can do something. So the question now is, are you going to?
So for all you guys, and I’ve gotten so many messages from so many of you ever since Funnel Hacking Live, “What can I do to help? What can I do to help?” This is what you can do to help. You share the trailer. Not just with social media, yes do it on social media, but contact your friends and family members, tell them to go watch this thing. Text everyone in your cell phone, say go register for this, watch this. Them watching it. One person watching it could donate a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand dollars.
We had, and I’m not allowed to disclose names, we had one person at Funnel Hacking Live who watched the documentary and donated a hundred thousand dollars. Who knew that person would have done that? Who knows what person you share it with might donate $2500, or $5000 or $10 or $20 and save one, two, five, ten, fifty children, and your connection was what made that possible.
I just hope this becomes a thing that all you guys see and feel and can be part of. I would put it on the thank you pages of all your funnels. I would put it in your email sequences. Plug it in everywhere because one person seeing this documentary can and will save children’s lives. And if you’re the one that connected them, imagine someday when we’re all dead and this whole story of this earth life wraps up to an end and we’re up in heaven or wherever we’re at, and you’re able to see that child and they’re able to come to you and say, “Man, because you shared this message, my life was better.” That’s what I want you guys to feel. That’s what’s possible. You could have been the one to save Anne Frank. You’re the one who could be saving the next person, but only if you share it.
So just because you don’t have money don’t be like, “I can’t help.” No, you can help. You connecting and you sharing and being willing to get this out there, and one person hears the message, who knows how far that could go. And that one person, it’s funny, back in the day if you remember the Rippln project, if you listen to the podcast episode one, you’ll hear me talk about this Rippln thing. But we had Rippln and we launched it and I remember we got 1.5 million people to join this movement in a six week period of time.
And what’s crazy, I remember looking at the big trees and the down lines and the ripples and how it all worked, and it was crazy because the people who had the biggest ripples didn’t necessarily recruit the most people, but they recruited the right people into the program. Some people that had these huge followings of 200 thousand people, they only invited ten people, but one of the people they invited, invited somebody else and that person invited 30 thousand people.
So you don’t know within your layers of separation, when it’s going to hit the right person who then takes that message and boom, blows it up. So share it with 5, 10, 20 people you know and invite them to share, and invite them to share it and who knows where in this little ripple that you create, who’s going to be the one that hits it and it somehow goes to out to 20 thousand, 30 thousand, 100 thousand people. From your efforts, a hundred thousand dollars is raised, from a hundred thousand dollars being raised, you save 40 children’s lives.
That’s the stuff I’m talking about right now. This is something that we can all be part of and we can literally change the course of history. We can change the world for these children. Funnel Hacking Live alone raised a million dollars, that’s 400+ children we were able to save from the captivities of these evil, evil people.
So I just wanted to encourage you guys to do that. So if you haven’t yet, go to ourfilm.org, go watch it. If you want to help us promote it, go to ourfilm.org/partners, we also have a page there that has more information how you can share this message. We’ve got banner ads you can use, a whole bunch of other stuff, sample blog posts, sample emails to send out, a bunch of things you can use to help get this message out as well.
So this is something worth doing, it doesn’t cost you anything, just a few minutes of your time to share this message, and hopefully you’ll feel the same feelings that I felt when I was in the Anne Frank home, and hopefully you’ll get the spirit of this and be willing to share it with those around you.
With that said, thank you guys so much for everything. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you soon.
If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
On today’s episode Russell talks about the teachability index, and why most adults no longer have it after completing school. Here are some of the other awesome things in this episode:
So listen here to find out how Russell regained his teachability and has been so successful.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, today is a day that we’re going to have a Marketing Secrets rant.
Alright everybody, I’m not going to lie, I don’t rant very often, but when I do, you guys seem to like it. And today I’m feeling a little ranty. So we’re going to talk about this for a little bit, and what I want to talk about, I don’t know, I’ve talked about this in the past, we’ve called it different things. But it recently was just re-brought to my attention. And it drives me absolutely bonkers.
So what I want to talk about is a concept I learned a long time ago from a dude who is a total con artist, and scam artist, but he was a really smart guy. Most of the scam artists, and con artists are. But he talked about this concept he called teachability index, which is your ability to learn. And teachability goes up and down throughout our lives, depending on a lot of things. Depending on a lot of it, like how open we are.
So for example, when you’re kids you’re very teachable. So your teachability index is very high, because you listen to everything someone says and you soak it up. Then you go to school and your teachability index is high, you listen to everything that’s coming through to you, even if the teachers have no idea what they’re actually talking about, but you believe it because you’re in school, therefore it’s gotta be true. They can’t lie to you in schools. They can’t teach you false doctrine at school can they? But we believe it.
And then the second you get the degree, for some reason in our heads, our brains shut off and say, “I now know everything.” And all the sudden our teachability shrinks to almost nothing. And this is where most human beings you bump into in the world are at. Where they think they know everything, therefore they’re not open to anything, therefore they are stagnant and they stop growing.
I struggled with this, as most humans do, for a while. In fact, I still remember the first time I went to a Tony Robbins event. And I remember he invited me there, and I was just a marketing and sales guy who thought I was a genius and drank my own kool-aid, and believed my own bio, and I thought I was the stuff. And I’m at this event and trying to get Tony Robbins as a client, and I’m going to close him and all sorts of stuff. And Tony’s got this thing, where if you want to work with him, you’ve got to come to his events first, because he doesn’t want to work with people who haven’t experienced him because you don’t understand him and his culture and what he’s doing.
So I went to his event, and I’m sitting there and I walk in with my backpack and my laptop thinking that it was going to be a marketing style event. And anyone who’s been to a Tony Robbins event knows that you’re jumping, you’re screaming, there’s no desk, there’s no table. You’re walking on fire, it’s insane, you’re dancing, you’re giving your neighbors massages and hugs, all things that I do not like to do.
And I was just like, “Nope. No, no, no!” and Tony’s up there teaching these things and I was like, “No. Nope, that’s not true. Nope, don’t believe you. Nope.” And I remember for about 5 or 6 hours I kept doing that. And I’m looking around and everyone’s having a good time, everyone’s having fun, they’re all jumping around and I’m like, “No. Tony does not know what he’s talking about, this is not true. This is not true.” And my mind was closed to everything.
And I was sitting there listening to all this, I started noticing that every new idea or concept that came my way, I instantly shut it down as, “No. Nope, nope. No, no, no.” and it was an instant shut down. And I remember sitting there realizing that man, my teachabilty index is really, really low. Why am I saying no to all these things. He’s challenging my thoughts and my beliefs and things that I thought I were true, things that I’d been raised my whole life believing and thinking. And I kept saying no, no, no.
And I remember that I made this audible switch about 5 or 6 hours into it, I said, “I keep saying no to everything Tony’s saying, and I’m not enjoying my time, I’m not experiencing this, and I feel like I’m missing out on something.” And I remember consciously thinking, you know what? From now on, the rest of the 3 ½ days of this event, instead of saying no to everything I’m going to say, “What if.” I’m just going to experience it and see what happens.
And the next thing Tony explained, at first my instincts were like, no, no, no. And I was like, but what if. What if what he’s saying is actually true? And what was interesting is I was like, huh. If this is true, then this is pretty powerful. And then the next thing came and I’m like, what if that’s true? If that is true, then that’s pretty cool. And then what if this is true, what if this is true?
I started shifting from no, no, no, to what if. And when I shifted that thought in my head, I can attribute the last decade of my success to me changing my immediate impulse from no to what if. And it’s been interesting because in my world, and those who know my story, I’m a conservative Mormon man who likes to sell things online and I wrestle. That’s my, there’s Russell Brunson in a nutshell. If someone’s like, “Who is Russell Brunson?” That’s it.
And even within my religion, there’s a lot of things that happen, where, and I don’t believe that they’re doctrinal, but I believe they’re cultural, but there’s things that happen that people are like, “No, no, no.” And what’s cool is that because of that experience ten years ago, I don’t say no to everything anymore, I say what if. And because of that, my life has been richer, and I don’t mean money. I mean people, people that I would have said no to or would have rejected earlier in my life, because of cultural upbringings and things like that. Instead of saying no I said what if. What if this person actually is a good person? What if they’re struggling just like I am?
And I’ve shifted from no’s to what if’s and it’s opened up amazing, deep relationships all over the place. Idea’s have come to me. I went from no, no, no’s to what if, and it’s opened up this whole world that’s been amazing, it’s been life changing for me and for the people around me.
So I wanted to share that because, and I’m not going to share the exact story because the person may or may not be listening and it doesn’t really matter, it’s just the concept of someone who is great in their field, who is an amazing person, amazing at what they do, they were at Funnel Hacking Live, And they just heard somebody talking about something that they should have, especially in their field of expertise, they should have said, what if. And if they would have said what if, they would have learned and grown and been able to help their clients so much more.
But instead of saying what if, they said no. And because of that, they stopped progressing. And I think that for some reason, and you know it’s funny, there’s a word and it’s not a word I say often because most of the time I look at it like a curse word, which is funny. Some of you guys are going to laugh that this is like the worst curse word for me, but it’s the word damn. Damn is stop, and your stopping yourself. You’re literally damning yourself when you’re saying no to things.
There are things you should say no to, but I think that things should come and you should look at them and try to figure things out in your mind. Pray about it, whatever it is, but don’t just throw out everything as no all the time. Open it up and say what if, what if this was true? What if this is something that could help me? What if this crazy person onstage who has helped 300 people naturally cure cancer, what if they know something that I don’t know? What if something I can take from this, what if there’s a piece, what if there’s a nugget I can take back and use in what I do?
I look at marketing, I look at the last 15 years of me doing this business, I can count the number of friends who started 10 years ago and are still doing this business now, on one hand. The reason why, most of them, they learned it all. Their teachability index shrunk and they’re like, “I know how this works.” And they were certain, absolutely certain what they were doing, and because of that when things shifted, things changed, they fell apart.
I would say the reason I’ve been around, the reason why I have such longevity in this business, why I’m one of the few dinosaurs that have been doing this now for 15 years is because 10 years ago I had this lesson, instead of saying no I said what if. And now when new marketing ideas, new concepts, new social networks, all this stuff that’s always shifting and evolving and changing, instead of saying no I say what if. And it opens up my mind, it opens up the possibilities.
And I think for all of us, no matter what sphere of influence you are in, the worst thing you could do is to lose your teachability. To think that what you learned in school, to think that what you learned up to this point, is absolute truth, because it’s not. It’s the absolute truth of what you have right now, but there’s more out there.
You may not agree with everything someone says, like I love Tony Robbins, but I don’t agree with everything he says. But because of that, I don’t say no to everything. There’s a, for the Mormons, one of our Articles of Faith, it says, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy we seek after these things.”
So for me, it’s like I’m looking for those things. I meet Tony Robbins and I don’t agree with 100% of everything he agrees or believes or says. But if there’s anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, I seek after these things. So I’m with Tony, I experience him. I’m like, what if this is true? What if this is true? Does this fit in my view of the world and if not do I need to shift my view of the world? Or is it something that I can disagree with this piece and push it aside, but I can still get all this amazing stuff. I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or whatever that expression is. I’m able to look through those things and say what if.
What is good, what is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy? Because I’m seeking after those things, I want them, I need them in my life. And there are all sorts of spots. Like all truth for me, is not in the Mormon church. It’s there, but I find truth from, I find so much truth from my friends that are Baptists, that are Muslims, that are Buddists, that are Atheists. I have friends that are gays and lesbians, I learned so much amazing things from. I don’t just shut all those things down, I don’t think anybody should.
It doesn’t mean I have to embrace belief’s or doctrines or things that I don’t feel comfortable with. It doesn’t mean that I have to believe everything someone’s teaching me about health or about fitness or about finances. But because I disagree with one little piece, I’m not going to shut down everything, I’m going to say what if. And I’m going to take the good and push out the bad, and from that I’m going to get a more whole picture, a more truthful picture of life in the world and the reality that we live in.
So I hope that helps somebody. I hope that helps a lot of you guys. I just hope that, and I know I’m preaching to the choir. Those who listen to this podcast, aren’t the kind of people who shut down their teachability index. You guys still have it open, you’re listening, you’re trying to learn. But maybe you’re super teachable in the marketing sphere but maybe you’re not as teachable in the thing that you actually do, in the business, in the fulfillment of the thing.
Maybe there’s other truth out there. And maybe you don’t believe all of it, but maybe there’s some that you could bring back that you could add to what you’re doing, that will make you more special, that will make you more different, that will make you more unique. And those are the things that make you more money. Those are the things that help you have the bigger impact. So look for those things. If there’s anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
Alright with that said, I’m going to bounce, you guys. We are doing a swag drop today, and we are launching the OUR funnel, so a lot of fun stuff happening in the next hour and 14 minutes that I’m looking forward to. So I’m going to head out. I appreciate you guys. If you are enjoying this podcast, please go to iTunes, rate and review it, let me know. With that said, I will talk to you guys all again soon. Bye everybody.
Creating an offer is the secret behind getting anything you want… including prisoners of war.
On today’s episode, Russell talks about how Harry Reichenbach helped end World War I with an offer that German soldiers couldn’t refuse. Here are some of the awesome and surprising things to look for in this episode:
So listen here to find out how hook, story and offer can convince someone to marry you, go to the movies with you, or even end a war.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today I am going to show you how a simple stack slide was the key, one of the keys to helping end World War I.
Alright, I’m so excited today. I am with my wife, we are celebrating our second anniversary, we decided to rent an Air B&B in San Diego and just ditch everyone, our kids and our family and we’re just sitting here, literally doing nothing. We’re reading, watching tv, eating junk food, getting massages and rinse and repeat. It’s been really fun.
So I bought one book with me, this is a book I’m actually really excited to, I’ve been really excited to read. One of my friends, Joe Vitale, AKA Mr. Fire, he wrote this book when he was, I don’t know about 15 years or so ago, right at the time I was getting into internet marketing. I remember seeing it and I think, I can’t remember if I read it or I read part of it, whatever, but I know I bought it and I had it and it was all about PT Barnum’s secrets to business success. It’s called, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute.
Some of you guys, if you know about PT Barnum, there’s a quote that he said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Which apparently is not true. But Joe Vitale’s book is called, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute. This book is super rare now, in fact, I tried to buy another copy of it on Amazon, it’s hard to get. And then I called the publisher, and actually ordered 650 copies that we are sending out to all of my Two Comma Club X members. So those of you guys who are in Two Comma Club X, and my Inner Circle, you should be getting this book in the mail, which you’re going to love.
Anyway, I might do a podcast on just all the amazing marketing stuff I’m learning from this book, because there’s so many, so many good things here from PT Barnum and from everything. But there’s one lesson I just read that was so good I literally dropped my book and I was like, “Okay, I have to go do a podcast on this, because this is insane and amazing and hopefully will prove a point I’ve been trying to make over and over and over again. That everything good in life comes by making really, really good offers.
So here we go. So in this book, this is actually not something PT Barnum did, this is one of PT Barnum’s, one of his students? Someone who studied Barnum. His name was Harry Reichenbach, they said he was basically the single greatest force in the American advertizing since PT Barnum.
Anyway, there’s a whole bunch of stories about him, but one that was insanely cool. Basically he created an offer, he created a stack slide, to try to stop the war. He printed out 45 million of these things, and flew over enemy lines, and dropped these things for the German soldiers to get, and he was hoping they would read this offer and become a prisoner of war. So literally he created an offer to get somebody to become a prisoner of war.
So I’m going to read this from the book, because it’s so insanely cool. You’re going to hear exactly what the offer was and how it worked, and how effective it was. It said, “During World War I, Reichenbach created a diploma that the allies dropped by plane over German Lines.” So every time I say “diploma” think stack slide or think offer. So he created an offer that the allies dropped by plane over the German lines. “The Diploma (the offer, the stack slide) gave any German soldier, upon surrender, status as a “prisoner with officer rank.” The back of the diploma listed the benefits:”
Okay, so the first thing, if you decide to take this offer, when you go all in today, I’m going to make you a prisoner with officer rank. So that’s not just a regular prisoner, it’s like a higher ranking prisoner. And on the back of the diploma, the back of the offer, stack slide, listed the benefits.
Number one, bread and meat to every single day. So when you become a prisoner of war, I’m going to give you bread and meat to eat every single day. Number two, you’re going to get cigarettes to smoke. Number three you’re going to get a delicing comb, I’m guessing that’s some type of comb you can comb your hair with. And number four, twenty-four sheets of toilet paper a day. Apparently that was the one that pushed people over the edge, because apparently they didn’t have toilet paper, which if you’re a German soldier out there trying to kill people, I don’t know about you, but I would like some toilet paper. So they got twenty-four sheets of toilet paper a day, if they go with this offer.
I apologize if you hear planes flying by. We’re in San Diego on the beach and there’s planes everywhere. Anyway, it says, “About 45 million diplomas (offer slides, stack slide, whatever you want to call it) 45 million were dropped over enemy lines during the war. Thousands of Germans grabbed the offer and put down their weapons. The German Army became so concerned that it passed a law making it a capital offense to pick up any paper on the battlefield. In short, bend over and get shot. The brilliant scheme worked because the German soldiers wanted – more than anything – toilet paper.”
Are you guys getting this? He wanted to end the war, he wanted more prisoners of war. So instead of just trying to capture people and pull them by their will he said, what if we made an irresistible offer, an offer so good that they would just come and give themselves to us. That way we didn’t have to go and beg and fight and scheme and do all this, they’d actually come to us.
They said okay, first thing, we need to give them status. Hopefully if you’ve read the Expert Secrets book, the light bulb went off in your head. They gave them status, number one is that when you do this, you’re not just becoming a prisoner of war, you’re becoming a prison with officer rank. You will have status. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is great. I want status.” Then he said, okay, what other things do you need?
If you look at the internal struggle. I’m going to be hungry. I’m going to give you bread and meat to eat every single day. “Wow, that’s better than I’m getting right now.” You’re going to get cigarettes to smoke, number three you’re going to get a comb apparently, to comb your hair. And then 24 sheets of toilet paper. That was the thing that pushed them over the edge.
“When you act now, I’m going to give you 24 sheets of toilet paper.” Anyway, I just thought it was so cool to see how this dude basically just created an offer to end the war. And if you think about it, everything we do in life all comes down to being able to create amazing offers. Think about if you want your friends to go to a movie with you, the better you can make the offer, the more likely they are to go with you. If you’re like, “Hey I want to go to this movie, it’s going to be really good.” They’re like, “I don’t want to see this movie.” You’re like, ugh.
But if you’re like, “If you come to the movie with me, I’ll buy your tickets, number two I will buy you a treat. Number three I’ll get us front row seats, number four, I’ll get blah, blah.” If you create an offer they’re like, “Sweet, I’m in.”
Think about this when you met your wife. You’re like, “Hey, do you want to go on a date?” She’s like, “uh, you’re okay looking.” You’re like, “How about this, we’re going to go get sushi, after sushi I’m going to take you to a movie, then after the movie we’re going to do….” You create an actual offer. And they’re like, “Yeah, I’m in. I want to do that.”
The better you become at offer creation, the better you do at everything. You’re going to find a better spouse, you’re going to be able to get your kids what they need to do, you’ll be able to motivate and entice your employees, you’re going to be able to sell your customers better price. You’re going to be able to end a war and get people to become prisoners of war for you. Whatever it is you need done, it all stems down to this one amazing thing, which is how do we create a really, really good, irresistible offer.
It’s just so cool to see in this context, because it could work in any of them. It’s funny, I was doing a presentation for the Two Comma Club X people the other day, and I was trying to explain offer creation and it was funny because a lot of them are in ecommerce too, so every time I get ecommerce people they’re like, “Well, I sell physical products, I can’t do offers.” I’m like, ugh, I want to stab you in the eye. It is so easy with physical products.
And then all the sudden an example popped in my head that I shared, that I want to share with you guys because I think it’s so good. So I said, okay let’s say you wanted to, you were going to go buy an iPhone right. And let’s say you already even had an iPhone. I was like, “Hey, I’m going to sell you my iPhone.” And you’re like, “I already have one.” Or “Why would I buy yours?” and hold on, one more caveat for this, I’m going to sell my iPhone for twice as much as you can buy it retail.
“So you can buy this iPhone I’m holding in my hands for $500, if you go anywhere online, or you can buy mine for a thousand bucks.” I guarantee you, in about 5 seconds from now, I’m going to get everyone of you guys to wire a me a thousand bucks for my iPhone.” Alright, this is the deal, “When you decide to buy my iphone right now, the first thing you’re going to get is an iphone, which the retail price is $500, you can get those anywhere, so that’s not that special. Therefore, it is not an offer, we are selling a commodity, and when you have a commodity, it is a race to the bottom.” So a commodity is the worst thing you could possibly sell. That’s what most people do.
So I’m taking this commodity, this iphone and now I’m going to turn it into an offer. “When you buy this iphone, a couple of things. Number one, recently I went through my entire library. I have purchase conservatively between $450- 500,000 in marketing courses over the last 15 years of my life. I used to have them on six bookshelves that wrapped two rooms in my old office, but I recently sent them to my brother, who took all, I’ll say 300+ marketing courses, average cost per course were a thousand dollars, some were 4 or 5 thousand dollars apiece, he took all of those and burned all the audio’s onto audiobook format. And those are all on my phone. I’d say conservatively you’re looking at, at least $450 – 500,000 in marketing and sales and personal development courses. All on this phone.
“So when you get this phone right now, I’m also going to give you access to all those courses because they are already on my phone. Number three thing I’m going to give you. I’m also going to give you an app called voxer that gives you a secret portal into a voxer app on my own personal phone. So anytime you want to vox me, you can click on a button and ask me any question you want, as often as you want.
“Number four, on my phone in my address book are the phone numbers of many really amazing people. Tony Robbins’ cell phone number is in there, Brendon Burchard, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy, actually that’s not true. He doesn’t have a cell phone. It’s his fax number, so I can fax him. He’s in there. Pretty much all the top marketing, sales and personal development guru’s on planet earth, their personal contact information is in my phone here.
“And number five, you have access to…” what else could I put in here.? You see, now I took this phone that normally sells for $500 for everyone, now I made an offer. How many of you guys would pay me a thousand bucks for this phone. Everyone on planet earth would. I had a friend who, I didn’t know this at the time, was about to go through some really bad times. He messaged me and he’s like, he basically did that, he said, “Hey man, I got this old cheap laptop here, it’s like a $500 laptop. But it has all my entire marketing library for the last 20 years on it. If you want, I’m getting a new laptop, I’m just going to throw this one away. If you want, I’ll ship it to you for like $5 grand.” And he told me all the courses that were on there, and I was like, “Done.” Wired him $5 grand and he shipped me out this laptop with all these courses on it, and it was the coolest thing in the world.
A couple of things, number one, it’s probably not legal to do what he did, because he doesn’t have the right to transfer those things, but I was like, but I thought it was he was just offering it to me as “this is my old laptop, you could just have it.” Little did I know, he made that same offer to a lot of other people, I think he ended up selling 20 or 30 of them at $5 grand a pop. He made himself quite a bit of money, really, really quick. All under the table. He was racing from a law thing, I found out later. Anyway, that’s a story for another podcast episode.
But the concept is true. If that makes sense. So it all comes down to offer creation. I don’t care if you want to get prisoners of war, if you want to find a beautiful wife, if you want to get your kids to do the right things, if you want people to go to the movies, you want people to read a book, if you want people to do whatever it is, that is the key.
Stephen Larsen in our Two Comma Club X event, he got on stage, I don’t know if I told you this already or not, and he got a book that he had never heard of, never read before, stood up and made an offer, saying “If you get this book I’m going to give you this and this, told a story about the book and made an amazing offer.” He had ten or twelve people buy the book, while they were sitting in the room, he had two people run on stage and fight for the book, and after he got done he said, “I’ve never read that book. I have no idea what it’s about. But I wanted to prove two things. Number one, I told a really good story and number two, I made a really good offer. And if you have a really good story and a really good offer, you can sell literally anything, even if you don’t know what it is. That’s all it takes.”
So that’s the magic of this, you guys. The art of, the whole art of hook, story, offer. I’ve just been geeking out on that so much recently. If you look at, I’ve talked about it a lot in recent podcasts. Go back to the episode called hook, story, offer. The more you master that piece of it, the better you can be at selling anything.
I look at when I was an affiliate, I used to promote a lot of people’s products, and I would always be number one, number two. We always got in these big competitions. I look at, why did I always sell so much? And the reason was because I look at whatever the person was selling, and I’d create an offer around it. “Okay cool, when you buy so and so’s course, I’m going to give you this, this…” and I’d create an offer of my own things, that they would get for free when they bought this thing from somebody else.
That’s the magic of this whole game. If you want to be the top affiliate in the world, if you want to be the top network marketer in the world, you want to be at the top of selling your product or service, it all comes down to hook, story, offer. Having a good hook, telling a good story, and then making the irresistible offer. So if it works to get prisoners of war in World War I, I promise you guys, it’ll work for whatever it is you’re selling as well.
I hope that helps, appreciate you all. Have an amazing day, and we’ll talk soon.
Hint: It starts with you, but if it ends with you, you’ll never have the impact that you actually want.
On today’s episode Russell talks about a webinar in which Kaelin Poulin will sell Clickfunnels rather than Russell. He then goes into detail of how the attractive character of Clickfunnels is evolving. Here are some of the interesting things happening in today’s episode:
So listen below to find out how Clickfunnels is evolving it’s attractive character.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? Good morning, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today is a very, very special webinar day.
Alright everyone, I’m pumped for today because today there is a webinar happening, selling Clickfunnels, and guess what? I’m not the one selling it. I’m freaking out, I’m so excited. There’s a principle inside this that I want to share with you guys that I think is groundbreaking, life changing, business evolving amazingness, so I’m excited to share with you during today’s episode.
So hopefully if you guys have read the Dotcom Secrets book, or the Expert Secrets book, or listened to me talk at all over the last decade of my life as I have been talking to entrepreneurs and sharing the most important things. One of the most important things I talk about is building out your attractive character. The attractive character is the personality of the brand that will be communicating with your audience, that builds rapport, that sells and does all those kind of things.
And it’s interesting, because the flack I get often from people who hear me talk about attractive characters like, “Oh well, if you focus your business on attractive character, you can’t ever sell your brand.” And it’s kind of annoying, but alas, those critics are all right. It is very, very difficult to sell a personality brand. It’s only been done a few times that I’ve seen and it’s hard. Because if you are the personality, it’s really hard to sell the brand.
But then on top of that, having the personality is what lets you build and scale a brand at record heights, faster than you ever could without it. So where is the middle ground here? That’s the thing.
When we were building Clickfunnels, I thought a lot about this. Someday Clickfunnels is probably going to be worth, I don’t know, a bajillion dollars or more, and maybe when I’m like 90 I want to retire and it would be cool to sell it at that point, but it’s going to hard if 90 year old Russell is the dude on the pitch videos. And they’re like, “Russell, when you die, so does Clickfunnels.” That’s not good for anybody, including me.
So I was searching, how do we do this? How do we do it? And I remember before we launched I was like, okay, we’re going to use attractive character because we know it works, and it’s going to be the fuel that launches this thing into the stratosphere. But I was like, long term it can’t just be me. It has to shift. I didn’t know how that was going to work, or I didn’t know behind it, but I was like, I know we’re going to do that. We’re going to hopefully build a community where other people become funnel experts, other people are teaching and doing this stuff, it’s not just Russell.
And I’ve noticed, as I’ve been watching, that’s happened. A lot of what’s been cool is other people are teaching and doing it. If you look at most of the industries, there chiro guru’s teaching funnels now, there’s dental guru’s teaching funnels. There’s gym owner guru’s. It’s amazing, I love it. The more of that happening, the better for me and I love it.
But it didn’t really address the whole attractive character thing, because it wasn’t being published from headquarters, from corporate or whatever you want to call it. It’s been interesting, I think the first evolution of a business, is that you usually, or whoever that person is in your business, is the attractive character first. And that awesome, but eventually what needs to happen for you start going to the next level, is the attractive character can’t just stay with you. If it just stays with you it can’t get scalable.
So if you’ve watched over the last two or three years, you’ve probably noticed me consciously doing this, I share less and less of Russell Brunson stories, and I share more and more of the stories of our members. So our success stories, our students, they become the attractive characters, that’s the second level. So instead of me talking about Russell, I talk about Kaelin Poulin, Brandon and Kaelin. I talk about Trey Lewellen, I talk about all the different people. I’m talking about them and they become the attractive characters. My success stories become the attractive characters, they are the practical application of what I’m teaching and talking and telling about.
So that’s the next level. And then there’s a third level, that for those who have been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed me do over the last 7 or 8 months, where the attractive character is not me, and it’s not my clients, it’s the clients of my clients. So if you notice my language patterns now, when I talk about people inside the Clickfunnels community, I’m not talking about, “Brandon and Kaelin made a million bucks.” I’m talking about “Brandon and Kaelin have changed the lives of 1.3 million women. These women who struggled with weight loss their entire lives. They now are able to lose weight.” Pamela Wible who has been able to help doctors who commit suicide, and how she saves their lives, and now the doctor’s life has been saved because of whatever. I could go on and on with all these success stories.
But what’s interesting, notice my language patterns, I’m not just talking about the person. Not talking about Brandon and Kaelin making millions of dollars, because that’s good, it’s better than Russell making a million dollars, but then the second level is they’re the attractive character, they’re making millions of dollars, but the third level is talking about the success stories of their clients. That’s 3 levels deep.
So you’ll notice me, as I talk now and I teach and share and present, I’m always talking about 3 levels deep. Not my stories, not my success stories-stories, but their client’s success stories. And that’s like the third layer.
So that’s kind of what you’re looking at. How do you get to those different layers? And it’s not something that happens immediately. If you start day one talking about the success stories of your success stories, that doesn’t really work. And some businesses aren’t ever going to lean towards that, where it’s actually possible. I think they are though. Let’s say for Kaelin’s business. She’s lost weight, she’s helped other people lose weight, but then the real impact is not that her people lost weight, now they’re better wives and better mothers, now they can serve more in the community, look at all the impact that they’re having.
So it’s like, the impact of your clients is the next level. Anyway, there’s three levels deep of the attractive character. So for me, we gotta transition from Russell being the attractive character, to our students, our users, our customers being the attractive characters to the customers of our customers, are ultimately the attractive character. They are the fruits of this whole thing.
Alright, so that’s the first thing I want to talk about. Now I want to step back one level. For me now, again, for the last 3 ½ almost 4 years it’s been Russell onstage talking about Clickfunnels, Clickfunnels, Clickfunnels, and this week, today in 3 ½ hours is the first time where we’ve done this. Kaelin Poulin is doing the Funnel Hacks webinar. It’s her telling her stories, her experience, her everything, but she’s selling my product at the end. So my success story is now becoming the attractive character, which is so exciting and so cool.
And basically, I’m excited to see what she does. I gave her my slides and said, “Look, the offer has to stay the same, because it’s still the Funnel Hacks offer, that’s what we’re offering people, but you have the right to tell your own story, sell it how you would sell it.” So she’s been working for the last month and a half doing this and it’s going to be really fun to see her do it today. And if it works well, then I’m going to probably go to other one’s of my students and have them create presentations on their success stories, and then selling my offer.
And hopefully, if we do one of these a month, over the next twelve months, we could have 12 of these, or 24 over the next 2 years, or who knows how many. But now it’s like, Russell and my presentation and my story becomes one of many different ways to sell. I’m one of many attractive characters inside of Clickfunnels. And that now, makes my business very sellable. Because if Russell disappears it doesn’t matter. We have 12 other people. We have Kaelin’s presentation that’s selling people, we have so and so’s presentation. We have other people, and that’s really the excitement and the magic for me.
So I’m excited. This is the practical application of 3 ½ - 4 years of trying to brainstorm and think through how this is even possible. And I never knew until, it’s funny because I’ve told Kaelin 4 or 5 times, “Man, I wish you could be the attractive character for Clickfunnels. I wish you could be the pitch person.” And she always laughs. Then 2 months ago I was like, “Wait, what if you really were? What if we did something like this?” and we kind of put together a plan and idea, and Brandon and Kaelin were like, “Yes, we’re willing to do that.” I’m like, “That’s awesome.”
So it’s going to be good for everybody. They get royalty on all the sales that happen through this webinar funnel, and through all future sales that come through it, so it’s a huge win for them. It’s a huge win for us, it gets a different angle, different attractive character, different person out there. And they can still focus on their business long term. They spent the time to develop this presentation and they’ll get paid on it for the rest of their lives. So it’s kind of a super cool win-win.
Anyway, for you guys, start thinking about that. Start thinking about, obviously the first phase where you’re at, you need to double down on the attractive character, it’s important. Even if you’re like, you read some stupid business book where someone’s like, “If your face is the brand, you can never sell your company.” Just realize that person is not creative or unique, and they have no vision on how to actually change the world. So don’t listen to them, focus on the attractive character is important. It’s going help people have connection with you and with your brand, otherwise they’re going to be going based on features and they’re going to leave you when someone comes out with a better mousetrap.
So that’s number one. Number two then, focus on helping people have as much success as humanly possible, so you can transition to them becoming the attractive characters. And then someday, training those people on how they can actually give a presentation. One thing that was not strategic but looking back now makes me seem like I’m a genius, is we’ve taught how many hundred thousand people how to do my presentation, how to do a perfect webinar, so it’s like, there are people we’ve developed that can do that.
So find your success stories and then help them, train them to be able to give a presentation to sell your products and services through their lens, through their view. And then third, start focusing on the success stories of your success stories. That’s the third tier of this. And that’s when you’re focusing on the impact of your success stories. And that’s really the level, I think where you have to get the attractive character to really have the impact you want. And obviously, like we said, someday if you did want to sell or step away from the business or whatever, it takes some pressure off your shoulders.
So anyway, I’m excited, I’m pumped. This is the first application of this concept and we’re going to see how it goes today with Kaelin. She’s going to crush it, she’s amazing. She’s one of the best presenters, one of the best sales people I’ve ever seen, and she’s got such a good heart. You guys have heard her story. She’s changed 1.3 million womens lives. Who does that? It’s insanely cool. Her husband Brandon is just amazing as well. I’ve never seen somebody execute as consistently and as quickly and as perfectly as him.
And it’s fun watching those two as a couple having so much success, and they deserve every minute. If anyone is ever like, “Oh they got lucky.” No, they’re insanely hard workers, insanely talented, they follow directions, they model, they’re able to put their own angles on things, their own spins, they improve everything they touch, and they are just amazing human beings. So I’m proud of them.
This is like this really cool, unique culmination of the last 3 ½ - 4 years of their story and having them come back now and pitch and present the product that was the one that made them have all the success. So it’s amazing.
Anyway, I hope you guys have an amazing day today. I cannot wait. Wish Kaelin luck, by the time you guys hear this, it will have already happened. But if you want to go see the presentation, I’m sure we’ll have a replay at ladybossmovement.com. Again, thanks for everything you guys and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
Update on my “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, as well as a side of marketing that we never get a chance to talk about.
On this episode Russell talks about serving your customers at the highest level when times are good, so they will continue to be your customers when times are down. Here are some of the other cool things you’ll hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to see why you should always be serving at the highest level possible, despite if times are good or bad.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk about something you probably don’t consider marketing yet it really, actually is.
Alright everybody, I hope you’re doing awesome. This whole last weekend for me was amazing. I got nominated to be entrepreneur of the year, here in this region of the country, and I had a chance to go down to Utah with my family and my kids, spend time with my parents and I had a great time. Then I went to the actual ceremony and we won. Woo hoo. We’re entrepreneur of the year in the tech category, and now I’ve qualified to go on to nationals, which will happen in November, and if I win that, then I get to go to the world’s. And then maybe there’s like a universe? I don’t know where it ends at that point, or where it goes, but it’s pretty awesome.
Anyway, now I’m back in Boise after a long 5 hour drive yesterday, getting back home. I had a chance to go back to my old high school, which was really cool. I had nostalgia, I went back to my old wrestling room, which my high school they’re actually tearing it down. So this is my 20 year reunion this year, and they’re tearing it down, which means it will be gone. The room, the wrestling room that I grew up in, that I trained in, that I practiced in every single day that literal blood, sweat and tears for 5 years of my life was in that room. And it’s sad to see it go down, but it was cool to be able to bring my kids there once before it’s done.
It just reminded me of that piece of my life and how much effort and hard work and everything had to go into for a goal. And it’s funny because wrestling is not like other sports. At my high school people liked basketball. So the basketball was upstairs and there was a lot of people playing basketball and having fun. They get to drink and eat food whenever you want. If you know anything about wrestling we don’t get to do that most of the time.
People actually show up to the matches, or to the games for basketball, which doesn’t happen for wrestling. And wrestling we were down underneath the basketball court in this little, tiny room that we called the rubber room. It smelled like rubber and sweat and kind of disgusting, I love it though. Not going to lie. And we were doing it not because we thought we were going to get people to show up and cheer us on, it was like, it had to be an internal thing. I have to do this because I want this thing, this goal.
I think a lot of times it’s very true, the same things are true in entrepreneurship. I say all the time, in fact, I said it at the award ceremony for the entrepreneur of the year, I said that entrepreneurship is the loneliest job in the world. And wrestling is similar. There’s not fans coming out. The girls don’t line up at the wrestling matches to cheer you on. It’s not that way, you do wrestling because you love wrestling. And I think entrepreneurship is the same way.
You do entrepreneurship because you love being an entrepreneur, because you love serving people, you love changing their lives. That’s the thing, the reason, the motivation of why you do it. I think it’s a big reason why here at Clickfunnels do the Two Comma Club and all these things, it’s because I want to award the entrepreneur who is killing themselves in an effort to try to change their own lives and then afterwards change the lives of their customers.
And because it goes so unnoticed and unknown, I want to be the one to bring that up. So that’s why we do most of the crazy stuff we do here. Because I know what it’s like to kill yourself in pursuit of a worthy cause and not have anyone notice, except for yourself. So it’s kind of a nice thing to do.
So the entrepreneur of the year award was fun for me, because it was like a time for people to, I try to recognize other entrepreneurs all the time, and it’s fun to have a chance to be recognized. Anyway, it just kind of reminded me back of wrestling, the same kind of thing.
In fact, I remember my dad and I were talking about this. At high school I was a state champ. I went to nationals, took second place in the nation, I was an all American, the highest level I think any athlete at my high school probably ever got to, and we get back and at the end of the year they award the athlete of the year for our school, and guess who got it? Some girl who didn’t do anything. Nothing wrong with the girl, I love that. But she had placed on a state winning team from our high school, and because she was the captain she got it. I was just like, are you kidding me? It just blows my mind.
Anyway, sometimes entrepreneurship, as is wrestling, a loveless job, but it’s amazing. Anyway, I thought it was really cool and just wanted to kind of share that with you guys.
Now one quick thing I want to share with you guys today, because I was talking about this with a couple of people over the weekend. It’s interesting right now we are in the middle of an economic boom here in the United States of America. I think real estate prices are the highest they’ve ever been. Right now, there’s tons of building and construction. But I remember back in, sorry the UPS guy is asking me if it’s okay if he parks behind me. Oh people.
Anyway, I remember in 2008 when the economy crashed and afterwards from like 2008 until like, I don’t know the next 5 or 6 years because the economy was down, it was, I remember we hired people to come work on our houses, and the actual owner of the company would show up and be like, “Yeah, there’s not much work left. So here I am.” And he’d be doing the work. And it was cool because they were hungry and they worked hard because of all these kind of things.
They showed up every day and made sure they had good quality and all sorts of stuff and I liked that a lot. And now as the economy is booming, these companies grow and they forget about the hard times. They hire all these people on and it’s insane. You look at the quality of what’s happening in the construction industry, especially here in Boise. I’m sure it’s the same everywhere. It’s horrible, they don’t care anymore because there’s so many businesses and so many jobs they’re just running and burning and churning and making insane amounts of money.
What they don’t understand is that things cycle, there’s the ups and downs. It happens to every business. It’s going to happen to my business again, it happens for all of us. So for them it’s like, they don’t understand that they’re up right now, but it’s going to come back down. And it’s like, the marketing they need to be doing right now is continuing to serve at a really, really high level when things are good. Because when it turns back around, guess who we’re going to remember? We remember people who served at a high level.
The people that are doing that, that are serving and not just burning and churning and cash dumping, they will get the jobs when things get tough. We had somebody that we paid to come do two big projects at our office and also a project in my home.
And up front I was like, “The most important thing is communication. You guys have good communication?” And it was insane how bad the communication was. I’m not going to go into it because….anyway, a bunch of bad things happened and right now it’s a year later and my floors are still warped because of them not communicating with me or with the people doing the hardwood floors and all these things.
And right now we’re about to start a project that’s going to be, I don’t know a 5 or 6 million dollar build project. And it’s like, they’re not getting that project because they’re like, “Things are so busy and we have so much stuff happening.” I was like, I don’t care how busy things are. This is my project, do you want to be more busy? This is what’s going to happen. I know your industry. I’ve seen the cycle. It’s going to crash, this whole thing is going to come down and guess what? You’re going to be broke and homeless and looking for a job, and guess who’s job you’re not getting? Mine, because you didn’t serve me at the highest level, when you didn’t have to.
So I just wanted to kind of say that, because it’s something that I don’t know, you guys are all going to experience. You’re going to struggle, you’re going to be amazing, you’re going to serve people at the highest level you’re able to, then you’ll start getting successful, you’ll start having the fruits of your labor will come, your company will start growing and then you’ve got this option where you can continue to try to do your best or be like, you know what, this person….just kind of a burn and churn model. Where it doesn’t matter, there’s more business, more work than I could ever do.
I just want to remind you that that cycle always come back. Be a good person, always try to serve at your highest level, all the time, not just when times are tough. And if you do that, when times are tough they won’t be tough.
Anyway, I hope you guys feel that from me and from our company. We are always trying to serve at our highest level, all the time. Even though right now, times are really, really good for us. The reason why they’re really good is because we continue to do that, we’re continuing to over deliver on every single aspect, every single step, everything we’re doing.
I know that by doing that, that’s what is going to keep us around, hopefully forever. And hopefully when the downtimes hit, you guys will remember that and you’ll stay with us because you’re like, “man, they served us when things were good, and they’re going to continue to serve us when times are down. And this is where we’re putting the eggs in this basket.”
So think about that for your company as well because I promise you guys, it’s all cyclable, it all goes up and it all goes down and it all goes up, and it all goes down. And if you are amazing when things are up, you’ll also be amazing when things are down. Alright, I’m out of here, I’m going to work on some fun stuff. Appreciate you guys, have an amazing day and I will talk to you guys all again soon.
If you want to see the impact that ‘plata o plomo’ had on one of our funnel hackers, listen to this episode.
On this episode Russell talks about setting lead or gold, or plata o plomo deadlines in order to be able to achieve your ultimate goals. Here are some of the awesome things you can look forward to hearing on today’s episode:
So listen here to find out what plata o plomo means, and why it’s so effective in helping people achieve their goals.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, it’s Friday, it’s the last day of school. I just watched my 5th grader graduate from 5th grade, which is exciting. Tonight we are driving to Utah for a couple of reasons, number one, I’m going to go see my Mom and Dad, which is always amazing. Number two, my kids get to go see my brother and his kids, which is really exciting, they’re pumped for that. And number three is we’re going to Tim Ballard’s and we’re going to be filming a part for the OUR documentary, kind of a call to action at the end where people can donate to raise money for Operation Underground Railroad. Then number four, there’s a big thing, entrepreneur of the year award thing, that I’m in the finals for, and I’m going down for that.
Apparently it’s a black tie event, and I don’t have black tie stuff, so yesterday I raced to Men’s Warehouse and bought a nice suit and nice tie, and now they’re getting them all custom fitted, and I’m hoping and praying they get them done before I drive past the building on the way out of town because otherwise I will be dressed up in flip flops and shorts at a black tie event. Anyway, wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll have a shot at winning the entrepreneur of the year, which would be kind of fun. And that’s kind of what’s happening.
This week we had our Two Comma Club X event, it was here in Boise. It was really cool, we had about 250-300 people who were here. And I didn’t go to the event because I’m trying to, those system events it’s run by James P. Friel, Steven Larsen, Julie Stoian, John Parkes, and then Brent Coppieters kind of running it. So I don’t need to be at those ones, which has been nice. They’ve been doing them all so I can stay home and continue working on Mother Funnel, which is still not live.
Anyway, I digress. Afterwards, they wanted to come and do a tour of the office so they’re all bussing over to come do a tour of the office. And I was like, I want to speak. And they’re like, “No you need to go home. It’s going to be too much. They’re all going to want pictures with you.” And I’m like, “I know but I really want to talk to these guys.”
So we jammed 200 people into our conference room that holds like 60 people, they were sitting on the floor, and standing room only. I came in and had a chance to do a presentation for them, which was really, really fun. I love that stuff. The energy in the room was palpable, you could feel it, you could taste it, it was so cool and I shared with them some stuff.
But the one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about, those who were in the Two Comma Club X program, you remember that I gave a presentation at Funnel Hacking Live called “Plata O Plomo” Which stands for Lead or Gold, or Silver or the Bullet, depending how direct a translation you want to get. And the whole thing was basically like, we want you guys to get in the Two Comma Club, but if you want to come in you have to set your lead or gold thing.
And the story behind lead or gold, I heard this originally from Gary Halpert, he talked about the Mexican Mafia or whatever, if they want to get a law passed, or a law changed, they go the politicians like, “You need to change the law.” And they’re like, “No, that’s insane.” So he said that night these same mobsters, they’d break into the homes of the politicians and come up to them and have a gun in one hand and have a bag of gold in the other hand, or silver, and say, “You need to make the law change, and you’ve got two options. Number one is lead, I’m going to kill you if you don’t. Number two is gold or silver, and you get a payment if you do.”
And that was kind of the metaphor, when that’s your two options, either lead or gold, you pretty much figure out a way to make it happen right, when those are your only options. So the whole thing of this is like, if you want to be in Two Comma Club you can’t stop, you gotta stop thinking about it and dreaming about it, you need to make it a thing. Make it a lead or gold, plata o plomo thing.
And so this is why we have this coaching program, we call it Two Comma Club X and it’s to get a Two Comma Club award, and then Two Comma Club X which is the 8 figure award, and it’s going to be plata o plomo. We’re going to push you guys along and it needs to be life or death. If you can trick your mind into being that, you’ll actually have success.
And from that we had 3000 or so people in the room, 600 or so signed up for the program and that’s the people that are in this program that we’ve been serving. And it’s just been really, really fun. We’re sending them all these cool plata o plomo things. They all got t-shirts that say plata o plomo now, and it’s like the chant, the mission statement for them. Lead or gold, we gotta make this happen. We’re moving forward, we’re doing it.
And it’s not a cheap program, it’s either $18,000 a year or $1,800 a month. So it’s expensive. And I told them, “The reason why it’s expensive is I want this pushing you and getting you to take steps.” Because if it’s like, oh it’s a $97 a month continuity program, you’re not going to take this serious. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I gotta make this work.”
Anyway, so I did this presentation with them, and I talked about a bunch of things, but that was a big one. It’s like, “Look you guys, Funnel Hacking Live was two months ago. Where are you at now? Have you been setting your own deadlines? Set a deadline, make it a plata o plomo deadline. I have to get this piece of the puzzle done. Don’t go to bed until it’s done. Then pick the next date. Set these dates to pull you through.”
Anyway, it was really cool. And then the coolest part, is this morning. One of my friends, and if you’ve been listening to this podcast forever you heard, I did a podcast with one of my friends from elementary and junior high school who was struggling. And I reached out to him on Facebook and anyway, I tell this story in a different podcast, I’m not going to go deep into it, but I basically told him, “If you go and listen to a bunch of my podcasts, I’ll tell you what it is I think you need to do to help you.”
And he agreed to do that, he went and listened to, I don’t know, 20 or 30 podcasts, so I recorded an hour long podcast for him specifically. So if you go back in the archives, you can find it. It’s an hour long, and I talk about 3 types of people in the business. Go and find it. There’s my trick to get you to go binge listen to every episode from the last year. But it was about a year ago, so hopefully you can go and find it.
Anyway, long story short. Funnel Hacking Live, I was still communicating with this friend and he wasn’t able to come because it was expensive and he wasn’t making enough money yet. I said look, “I’ll give you a free ticket if you can figure out a way to get out there.” What’s fun is this morning, I don’t want to ruin the story, but he joined the Two Comma Club x program and he came this morning to my house so we could hang out for like an hour and we could talk. And he was telling me the story from his point of view.
He was like, “Look, I didn’t have money to come to the event, so I put it on credit cards. And I was like, hopefully I can figure out a way to make at least $3 grand back in credit cards. I came out there and then you guys made the presentation for the Two Comma Club x, the plata o plomo. I was sick to my stomach. It was so much fun to watch the presentation and see the master doing his thing. But then that night I went back to my hotel room and I was sick to my stomach because I knew I needed to be in it, but I didn’t have the money.
“You don’t understand, my rent is $700 a month, the last two years prior I was making $25 thousand a year. We were in poverty. And you made this presentation and it was $1,800 a month and I sat in my room crying because I knew that I needed to be part of it, but I knew I couldn’t. I called my wife and we talked about it and we just said, we’re not in a point of our life when we can and maybe in the future we’ll figure out a way to do it.”
And he said he went to bed that night and struggled and couldn’t sleep very well and the next morning he woke up and went down to the event early and was standing around and he went and was talking to Kevin Annison, who is one of our video dudes. The guy who does all the Funnel Hacker TV stuff, and he said after talking to Kevin, he said, “I need to join.” And he said, “I walked over to the thing, I gave them my credit card and signed up for this program that’s $1800 a month that I couldn’t afford but I knew I needed to do. As soon as I felt it, I had chills, I knew it was the right decision.”
And I didn’t know this at the time, had I known I would have been like, “No, dude.” I probably would have talked him out of it. But he said he was so scared he didn’t even tell his wife right away. He went home for a week before he told his wife and then he finally told her. And she was like, “We don’t have $1800 a month. We can’t do this.” And he’s like, “I know. Now I have a plata o plomo. I have to figure this out. I gotta do it.” And he started just telling me what he did afterwards.
He went and created an offer. He’s like, “I saw how Russell created an offer, so I created an offer for my video work and I went and presented it to somebody and they were excited but they couldn’t afford it, so they said no and I was kind of bummed out. Then I met someone else, we were working on a project, and then they wanted to do more stuff with me, so they asked me for a quote, and I told them $25,000. I made them an offer with a stack like you did, and they said yes. That one deal I more than paid for the coaching program.”
And then since then he’s closed another deal of $11,000 I believe he said, and he’s got other ones coming in the pipeline. And for him it was that plata o plomo. Where it was like, for a year prior we’ve been talking about this, he listened to the podcast, he’d been kind of moving things forward, but it wasn’t until he had that lead or gold thing, where it’s like, look you’ve got two options. Either make this work or you’re done. And when he had to he was able to figure out a way.
So I just wanted to share that with you because man, when he was telling me that story this morning, as someone who’s a friend, who I’ve known since I was 5 years old, it was cool. And I would be kidding you if I didn’t tell you I was scared to death when I found out he had signed up. I’m like, dude, I know you don’t have the money for this. You shouldn’t be buying this.
But for him, it was like, “I needed that lead or gold to push me, to make sure that I did it. Now I’ve got this network of humans and entrepreneurs I connect with at a different level than normal people. And all these amazing things are coming from it.”
Anyway, so plata o plomo, I just wanted to share with you guys because I know a lot of you guys have been playing this game for a long time, you’ve been listening, you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, paying attention and enjoying it, but I think for a lot of you guys you’re not going to have the success you want until you make that plata o plomo decision.
And it doesn’t have to mean giving me $1800 a month. That’s cool, if you want to do that. I’m totally up for it. But it means like, setting your deadlines. This has to happen and forcing your mind to believe it. I’m in a weird state now where CLickfunnels is growing insanely fast, and you know all this amazing stuff is happening and I don’t need more money. We don’t need to launch the next funnel or whatever, but I still trick my mind, this is the launch date. It has to happen. Plata o plomo. I get my whole team convinced and we set these dates and we don’t miss them.
That’s why you probably hear me on the podcast sometimes, “Well, it’s 3 in the morning, but we had to be here because tomorrow the funnel is going live.” And you’re probably thinking, why in the world is Russell doing that? He’s made enough money, he doesn’t need to launch this next funnel. Why doesn’t he push it out a week or two and get it done the right way? And the reason is because I know what causes success, it’s that mindset of plata o plomo. It’s the mindset of this has to happen.
I would argue that the reason why I’ve been successful is because of that. I’ve tricked my mind into that, I’ve continued to. The reason why I continue to keep pushing the envelope, the reason why we’re continuing to grow. I’ve been in this game for 15 years now, I have seen friends and businesses come and go, businesses who I thought were so big they would never topple. They’re gone now, you guys wouldn’t even recognize the names if I mentioned them.
And what’s the difference? I think the other ones’ people become complacent. If we’re like I don’t want to become complacent. I want to grow and to serve. I can’t have the impact on the world I want to have if I stop or if I shrink. I gotta keep on growing. So it’s like setting these deadlines, keeping things going forward. The plata o plomo for me, doesn’t just mean money. It means the impact I want to have.
So I just encourage you guys to start looking at that mindset and shifting it and realizing that if someone broke into your house tonight and said, “Look, this funnel has got to go live by Friday or else you’re dead. Or if it does go live, you get this gold.” Which one are you going to do? What would you do? And how would you trick your mind to be able to figure out the right way to do it? If you do that you’re going to figure out the right answer.
So there you go, I hope that helps you guys. I’m going to go in and get some stuff done because we got a webinar next week and my plata o plomo moment, I literally have two hours and fifteen minutes before it has to be done, because at that point I’m jumping in the car and driving to Utah, so plata o plomo. That’s what’s happening right now in my world. Pick your date, make a plata o plomo moment, and run after it. With that said, appreciate you guys, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you guys soon.
Stop worrying about those people who aren’t willing to vote with their credit card.
On this episode Russell talks about why you shouldn’t care what people think when they don’t vote with their credit cards. Here are some of the insightful things to listen for on today’s episode:
So listen here to find out why you should only be concerned with your customer’s opinions of you.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson with the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk about who gets a vote in their opinion about you.
Alright everybody, so there’s this weird thing that us humans have, where we care what other people think. I know, I know, it’s what gives us empathy and makes us actually good people most of the time, but in business it can cripple you. In fact, it does for so many of you guys, as I watch as you start an advertizing campaign and somebody in your ad says, “You suck!” and you’re like, “Waaaa” and you crumple and you cry and the whole thing falls apart.
You stop running the ads because someone told you that you’re lame, or that your ad was funny, or that you’re goofy, or whatever and you freak out and stop moving forward and the whole thing collapses because you cared about somebody else’s opinion about you.
So I want to help you on this journey to stop caring about everybody, except for one type of person. There’s only one person that has earned the right to have an opinion about you, and that is the person who has given you money. That’s it. That’s the only opinion you should care about, the opinion of the person who gives you money.
And this is in so many different aspects of business. For example, when I first started speaking, and I even to this day, I’m not the best speaker, you guys have probably noticed that. I get excited, and so people are like, “Oh he’s a good speaker, he’s excited.” But no, I stutter, I say um’s and ah’s, and crap and all these things. If you look at, if I was to go to the NSA, the National Speaker’s Association and get judged, they would destroy me, it would be horrible.
So when I first started doing events, I was like, after the event I would hand these little papers to everybody and I was like, “Hey can you give me some feedback on the speakers.” And guess what people gave me, their freaking opinions. And guess what, their opinions, I remember reading them and being destroyed. “this person thought I was horrible.” And they were so mean about all these different things.
I remember taking it really internally for a long time and stressing about it and freaking out about it, until one day I was listening to good old, mean Dan Kennedy and Dan said something that was so liberating to me, that I need to share with you. He said, “The only people’s opinion I care about, are the people who give me money.” And he talked about speaking from stage, he’s like, “I used to do this thing and at the end of my presentation everyone would fill out a form to critique me. They would hand me a big stack of forms, I would immediately walk over to the garbage and I would throw them away without reading any of them. The only thing that matters to me, whether or not I did good on speech or not, is how many people line up at the back of the room to give me money. That is the judge of how well you did. That’s it.”
When you’re running ads, it’s not how many people write nasty comments in the things, all the haters and trolls and annoying people like that. It’s how many people actually gave you money. How many people did your ad, your persuasive, your presentation, your funnel whatever, did it convince people to give money? That’s the only thing that matters.
One of the worst things I see people do all the time is, and I understand it because us funnel people like that, we all want people to critique our funnels before they’re done. I’ll see it all the time in our Facebook group and other places, “Hey can you come and critique my funnel?” and people are giving all sorts of advice, and I’m reading the advice and I’m like, don’t take advice from people. People lie, they don’t know they’re lying, but they’re lying. They’re going to give you advice like, “Oh you should do this, you should do this, you should change this.”
The only opinion that matters are the people voting with their credit cards. That should be the only thing that matters. If they pull a credit card out of their wallet to buy something, that is the opinion that matters. That is the only split test I’m going to look at, not people’s opinions, because people’s opinions are wrong. They’re not entitled to their own opinion when it comes to marketing and sales. The opinion of the marketplace is the only thing that matters, and it’s how people vote with their wallet.
So I wanted to share with you guys this, because I know so many of you guys get crippled by that fear of what other people think and you should stop. The only thing you should care about are the people, that’s the only opinion you should care about, the opinions of the people who are actually giving you money because they’re the one’s that matter.
If someone hates your ad, they don’t buy your thing, they talk trash on your webinar because they’re like, “Oh, I’ve already heard this 5 times before. When are you going to get to the good stuff? Stop telling me your story, all I want you to do is tell me the one secret about blah.” Those people are not giving you money, therefore you should not care about their opinion. The one’s you should care about are the ones who hear your voice and they come to you and they’re looking for a change in their life. Those are the one’s you should care about, those who give you money.
Now when people give me money, and they give me feedback, then I pay attention. When someone’s like, “hey, I’m in your coaching program, this part is confusing to me, I’m stuck here. I don’t know what to do.” I listen to those opinions and I try to figure out how to serve them better. But I don’t focus on how to serve the people who aren’t voting with their credit cards. Their vote is invalid in my mind and it should be in yours as well because they are not your customers. The customer is the only thing that actually matters.
So I hope that gives you guys freedom and permission to just be like, “Ah, thank heavens.” Because they’re the only ones entitled to have a vote. All the rest of the haters and the annoying people and those kind of things. Tune them out, ignore them, they do not matter to you and they shouldn’t. So hopefully that helps somebody.
Anyway, I just dropped the kids off at school, we have today, and tomorrow is the last day of school and then it’s officially Summer. I’m not sure if I’m ready for this, but it’s happening. I just remember last weekend, by the end of the weekend I was so tired I was ready for the kids to go back to school and now there’s this 3 month long weekend coming up. Hopefully we can survive it. Oh man, it’s going to be awesome.
This weekend I’m actually driving to Utah. I am a finalist of an entrepreneur of the year award. So it will be kind of fun to see if I have a chance to win that, which would be cool. I’m driving with my wife and my kids, and coming down. So maybe, just maybe if I can do it, my goal is to catch my wife on a podcast during the drive to Utah. Many of you guys have been asking for the podcast where Collette shares her thoughts on being married to a crazy entrepreneur, so I’m going to try for all you guys. It’s not going to be easy, she doesn’t enjoy it, she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it, but I’m going to see if I can get her to share, because some of you guys want to know.
So that’s all I got guys. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day. Don’t forget the only person who should matter are the people voting with their wallets. Your opinion doesn’t matter, other people’s opinions don’t matter, the only things that matter are your customers. I hope that helps you guys, appreciate you all, have an amazing day and we’ll talk soon. Bye everybody.
The quickest path to launch your entire expert business fast.
On today’s podcast Russell talks about how easy it would be to get started by making a presentation and changing your life. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out how easy it could be to get started on a mini business overnight.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I am coming to you from inside of my wrestling room and I want to talk about something that I think will get a lot of you guys started very, very quickly.
So I’m supposed to have wrestling practice this morning, but I woke up super early the day before so I was super tired last night and passed out before I could text the guy that comes and wrestles with me, to let him know that we were going to wrestle. So I woke up this morning and there was a text from him late at night saying, “We wrestling?” and then, yeah he was already, he stayed up late last night and then slept in this morning.
So I’m in the wrestling room right now just to lift by myself. And usually I’m in here with people so it’s kind of weird. This is my little sanctuary. For those who haven’t watched our YouTube at all, you know that my house is kind of like my compound. We made this place kind of crazy, so I have my own wrestling room, and we have a bunch of other crazy things. But this is like my sanctuary. As a wrestler I always wanted something like this and it’s just the coolest thing in the world, this external garage in my backyard.
So I’m out here right now just sitting on the wrestling mats. I just got done working out and was just thinking about something that, I think, in fact, I’m going to challenge all of you guys to do this. Oh, I’m throwing out a challenge. I was just thinking, if I was to start from scratch right now, and I don’t know why, actually I do know why this is in my head, two days ago I did a podcast about really quickly just finding two people to partner with to do other hard aspects of your business, and you just do the third one.
Anyway, I think the reason I’m working on a project right now that will be going live in two months, that’s very focused towards beginners. If you were to start over from scratch what would you do? So that thought, and that question has been going through my head a lot which is probably why these ideas keep coming up, so hopefully some of you guys benefit from them. But I was thinking about this. So at Funnel Hacking Live earlier this year, I did six presentations. For each presentation I had to figure out a hook and a story, and then teach a concept that was interesting.
So if you look at my presentations, my very first presentation was how to go from zero to a million, a million to ten, and ten to a hundred. So that was my first presentation. Then the second presentation I gave was all about, what was the second presentation? The second one was funnel audibles. No excuse me, the second one was conversation domination. How to dominate the conversation so that when somebody pulls up their phone to look at Facebook, instagram, youtube, pinterest, whatever they look at, you dominate that conversation. You’re everywhere. So conversation domination.
Number three was funnel audibles. Number four was the twelve month millionaire, number five, I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I had six. So for each of those, it was a presentation and I tried to figure out a sexy hook on each one. Why would this be interesting to people? Why is it not the same thing you see on Instagram or Facebook a million times? We log onto Facebook and everyone’s like, “My three week master class on how to run Facebook ads.” It’s just like, everyone’s thing is the same.
So how do you figure out a hook that’s truly unique in marketplaces that are flooded? And most marketplaces worth being in are flooded. So for me, it’s just trying to figure out that hook. I spent a couple of months before the event, trying to figure out these different hooks, what would be the most intriguing, exciting. I would think of an idea and go run it by Dave and a couple other people in the office, “Hey, what do you think about this?” and they’d be, “Oh that’s cool.” And I’d be like, “Crap, that was wrong.” But if they were like, “Holy crap, I want to hear that presentation.” Then I’m like, “Alright, cool. That’s the right title.”
So it was just me kind of organically doing that right. So for you, whatever market you’re in, that’s the first thing I’d do. Pretend like you’re going to be speaking at Funnel Hacking Live or whatever, let’s say you’r ein fitness, maybe it’s paleo hacks or like whatever the big event is, maybe you’re giving a Ted talk or something. But envision yourself, “I’m going to be onstage giving a presentation of a topic.” And you have to make this the sexiest, most unique, most intriguing, interesting thing. You need a good title and a good hook.
Conversation Domination, that’s a good title. And the hook was, basically the hook was like TV back in 1963 was three channels, ABC, NBC, and CBS. So people like Tony Robbins who wanted to dominate the entire, all media, they’d buy ads on those three channels and that’s how Tony Robbins became Tony Robbins. Today it’s different, TV got fragmented, and now there’s a thousand cable channels and it’s harder to be successful. Whereas today, our phone is the tv of the 1960’s, the place where people spend 99% of their time is like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.
So the question is how do we dominate the conversation so that we are all present in all those channels all the time, so when people open up any of those apps on the phone, all they see is us. So that’s kind of the premise of that presentation. The hook and the story.
And then I go and teach how to do blah. This type of presentation, in your mind, specifically this is not like the perfect webinar where I’m trying to break false beliefs and all that kind of stuff. This one I’m specifically teaching somebody how to do something. So I went through and showed you how to dominate the conversation from each of the different platforms, how they work together, and explained that whole thing. So that was the presentation, I think it was 60 or maybe 90 minutes long.
Now for you guys, again, I want you to do the same thing. You’re giving a Ted Talk, you’re speaking at Funnel Hacking Live, you’re speaking at your event thing. What is your thing? What is a unique title for it, that’s super intriguing? What’s the hook and the story that makes it really interesting? And what’s the how-to to teach people how to get that result you’re promising them?
For all of you guys, you should have that, or should be able to figure that out. If not, that is your homework. Congratulations, stop surfing YouTube and listen to podcasts, it’s time to figure that out. Pretend like you’re giving a presentation, pretend like I just asked you to speak at Funnel Hacking Live and you’ve got to get onstage in a week and give that presentation. It’s got to be sexy, it’s gotta have a good hook, have a good story, and you gotta teach a really cool how-to.
So for me, I’m looking at the six presentations Igave at Funnel Hakcing Live, and four of those presentations, maybe three, probably three. Three of those presentations are really good. I could build an entire business off of that presentation.
In fact, Peng Joon who spoke at Funnel Hacking Live, if you guys were there, he gave a presentation called Content Multiplier. That was the title, sexy title, Content Multiplier. His hook was like, how I spend three days per quarter with my camera, it records all the content for all my social media channels at once. And then he showed, I spend three days, hit record and then from this is what we do. He shows you, he chopped up the content, move it around, do all this stuff. Content Multiplier, that was his presentation.
Now he actually since then, went and did what I’m talking about. He went and built an entire business around it. He took his presentation and his slide, and he made a little booklet, made a free plus shipping offer, then he upsells you a video training course going into more depth of exactly how to do it, then he upsells you from there a done for you service, where they give you all the templates that you need to be able to actually do it. So he built a whole entire business off of this one singular presentation.
If I was to do that for Conversation Domination, I could do the same thing. I could take my presentation, make that a, put it on a CD, or a thumb drive, or I could print the slides out and put it into a book, get it transcribed, make it a nice book. There’s a ton of ways I could turn that presentation into a really cool front end offer. It could be free plus shipping, it could be $27, it could be $97, whatever.
Then after someone buys that there could be an in depth training, where instead of me doing an hour long presentation, I’m going through in two days or three days, going in depth in that process and showing people behind the scenes of exactly how I do it. Then number three I could have a done for you service on the back where I just do it for people.
Funnel audibles, same thing. I could take my presentation, make a free plus shipping book out of it, or put the presentation on a DVD or an MP3 player. I could then upsell all of the templates that we use to begin our funnel audibles. When we build funnels, here’s the templates we use. These are our controls. Control is the winning template, I’ll give you all my controls and you can start from there. And then on the backend I could do a high end server for $5000 a month where I do the Funnel audibles for you. You run the traffic, we login and tell you what to change, you come back and make those changes, and we go back and forth and do these audibles, and that could be a service we sell.
What were my other presentations? Anyway, for all my presentations, I could build an entire business easily off of that thing. So for some of you guys who are stuck, “I don’t know what to sell Russell, I don’t know what do. I haven’t found my voice yet. I haven’t blah…” All the different, million excuses I hear all the time. This is where you should start at.
Let’s do something amazing. Make an amazing presentation. Now when I did my presentation, I didn’t have these ugly PowerPoint slides, I hired a designer and said, “This is called Conversation Domination, can you make a really cool design for this new little brand I’m launching?” And they did, they designed a really cool thing. If you saw the presentation, Conversation Domination had this really old tv that had the tv channels on it, it was awesome.
If you look at how I did Funnel Audibles, it was this little clipboard showing lines and arrows and it was like a little funnel football thing, calling audibles. It was a cool design. Then I gave the presentation, so I got the video of the presentation, and I have my slides, I could get it transcribed and then boom, there’s my front end and now I’m ready to rock and roll. I could launch six little mini businesses off my six presentations tomorrow. That’s how fast it is.
So for you guys, do the same thing. This is your homework, you need to make an hour long presentation, teaching the crap out of the thing you do, and figure out exactly what that is. Don’t just be like, “I’m going to teach you how to do Facebook ads.” “I’m going to teach you how to lose weight.” Because that’s what everybody, that’s the non-sexy version that people won’t give you money for. What’s the sexy version? What’s the hook? What’s the hook that makes yours intriguing or interesting?
If you go back a few episodes to Hook, Story, Offer episode that I did here on the Marketing Secrets podcast, listen to that again and hopefully you can get ideas and get the wheels in your head spinning about hook, story, offer. For this though, you just need a really good title, that’s the hook, and then the story, and then from there you can actually teach the how-to behind it. And I recommend what you guys do is go and get the title, get somebody to design some sweet looking slides, just the title slide that has the name of your thing, and then a little tiny logo you can put on your slides, and then make a presentation that you’re going to give for an hour, and then that’s going to be your first product.
And then you’re going to open up, if you’re on PC you use Camtasia, if you’re on a Mac, you do ScreenFlow, and if both of those technologies are too difficult, which they’re not, they’re super easy, get your iPhone out and record yourself giving that presentation, teaching that thing for an hour. Now you have everything you need to create an amazing little business overnight, like a million dollar a year business done that fast.
The presentation is your front end. Again, free plus shipping, it’s super low ticket, it’s whatever that is. Then your first upsell is “Okay I’m going to deep dive with you for an extended training, where you get a membership that goes through me showing you behind the scenes exactly how we do everything.” And then number three is the done for you service, where you do this process or a piece of the process is done with you maybe, or you do a part of it with them, but really, really expensive. And that’s it, you could do that on anything.
I have a friend right now, Monica Tanner who interviewed me for her podcast. She’s someone that lives really close to us, I’m going to actually tell her to go listen to this. I don’t think she’s ever listened to a marketing podcast before. But she wrote this little pdf teaching people to have a screen free summer, she should take that pdf, turn it into PowerPoint slides, do a presentation of her teaching it, make that a really low ticket, free plus shipping, or put the video on an MP3 player or something. $7 you get a pdf version, or something really inexpensive, where it’s like, go get this, my presentation on how to get a screen free summer.
Then the upsell now is, now you understand the why’s and how’s and all that kind of stuff, I’m going to go deep and record myself in my own home, showing you how we did this. Then the upsell for $197 or $97 or whatever it is, doing a deep dive course showing it. So you actually show behind the scenes of practical application of how you did that thing you talked about on the front end offer. Video yourself showing, going deep into all the different things. Go into your house and show how you set the things up, how you help your kids, how you get them to cope, here’s the games you do instead, all the things to keep them so they’re not bored during the summer.
All the cool stuff, as soon as someone’s like, “you’re right, I do need to do a screen free summer, but my kids are going to drive me crazy, therefore I must give them screens.” Do a deep dive course for 10 hours or whatever it is, going through all that stuff and showing that. Then the backend is done for you, where it’s like, “I’ll get on the phone with you and your entire family, we’ll spend two hours on the phone and I’ll help you guys implement this inside your house. Throw Facetime on your phone, I’ll walk around your house with you, help set things up, show you what to do, how to do it, and then boom, for $1000 or $2000, you could do a done for you version where we help you implement this inside your house.
Let’s say you’re doing a food thing and you’re in the weight loss space, industry. It’s like, how has this worked for me? It’s like, figure out a really cool hook. Everyone’s doing keto, everyone’s doing different things, what’s your hook? My hook could be, if I was doing this, how a wrestler who’s cut over 3500 lbs in the last ten years, discovered the one secret that actually does something. I’m not in the weight loss industry, I don’t know how to do it.
The burrito diet. I saw a guy a little while ago had the burrito diet. Here’s how I lost 20 lbs eating nothing but burritos. What? Boom, there’s your free plus shipping, a presentation showing how you do nothing but burrito diets. And then the upsell is like, “I showed you the burrito diet, showed you how to do burritos, but the one thing about burritos is after you do ten of them, you get really bored because it’s the same thing. So I’m going to show you guys my 200 favorite burrito recipes, on top of that I’m going to show you guys how to eat when you go home, and how you do blah.” Whatever it is.
And the done for you service is like, “Look, I’ll get on Skype with you, or I’ll get one Facetime with you for an hour, we’ll go to the grocery store, we’re going to buy all this stuff, I’ll show you how to make it, we’ll actually be cooking with Russell. We’re going to be cooking with you, with your family, that way you can experience it, make sure you cook it right. I’ll show you how much to put in, and it’ll be literally like having me as a chef in your corner, coming through my phone.”
Anyway, those are horrible examples off the top of my head, but conceptually, do you guys get it? One presentation can and should build your entire business. So it’s time to create that one presentation. Stop what you’re doing right now, pause the podcast, stop goofing around on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and let’s make a presentation. Let’s teach something really, really amazing.
The key is though, for starting, again you have to have a really good hook, a really good story, create a presentation, that’s your front end product. Upsell are going to be deep training, how to do it. And then the second upsell is going to be a done for you service where you actually do that thing for them or with them.
Alright, you have your assignment. I expect to not hear back from you until your presentation is done. Thanks so much for listening you guys, and I will talk to you on the next episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Oh, btw, if you’ve got a few minutes, please go to iTunes, rate and review. I’d love to hear back from you guys. Some of you guys know we had to launch a new channel because we got the iTunes slap, so our new channel doesn’t have as many comments, so if you love this podcast, please go and let me and the world know. Some of you guys may be listening to us on our old channel, if so please come over. Go to iTunes, search for Marketing Secrets, resubscibe to the new channel because the old channel will be fading out here in the very near future.
With that said, you guys, thanks for everything, and we’ll talk soon.
If you want to be worthy and ready for the mission that God wants to give you, it’s time to follow this one simple principle.
On today’s episode Russell talks about a lesson he learned recently from his former high school football coach that applies to all aspects of life. Here are some of the inspirational things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to find out why it’s important to do hard things.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to help you guys to actually do some hard things.
Alright, alright, I’m heading to the office today, I am so excited. This is the first day in like 5 days that I have a chance to actually go and move forward on plans for world domination, because it’s been weekends and holidays and school things, and today I get to actually work. We also have a Two Comma Club X program here, so we got about 250 entrepreneurs here in Boise working on getting to their million dollar funnel, which is exciting. And it’s exciting, everything is amazing.
But today I want to talk to you guys about something that I think we are not talking enough about. I was at church on Sunday, and what’s crazy, so I grew up in Utah and when I was in Utah my high school wrestling coach, his name was coach Lee Leslie, football coach, sorry. And I wasn’t that good at football, I’m not going to lie.
But anyway, he was a really great coach. I think a year after high school graduation he left apparently, and I didn’t see him for like 20 years. Then I moved to Boise, Idaho and I moved around, and finally moved into my new home and I go to church first day, and guess who is in my ward? Mormon’s, we call our churches-wards. So in my ward, my church I was sitting there and I hear this guy talk and it’s this voice from the past and I was like, “Wait a minute, is that coach Leslie?”
And I’m like, “Dude, you have no idea who I am, but you were my football coach in high school! How crazy. So we kind of reconnected, and now his son Jake, who is an amazing designer works for us and it’s really, really cool. Anyway, he is actually moving away and on Sunday he had a chance to speak and then now they’re basically moving to a different area. Anyway, he spoke at church, it was really, really cool, which that could be a whole topic for another day.
But afterwards in one of the classes they asked a question, if you were going to die, what feedback would you leave your kids? What Coach Leslie said was so cool, he said in his masculine, manly voice he was like, “I would tell my kids to do hard things.” And that was it. I was like, huh.
I started thinking, most of us, we don’t do hard things anymore, especially our kids, and I’m afraid for our kids’ kids. We just don’t do hard things anymore. If you really want to become amazing at what you do, you have to do hard things, you have to be okay with that. And I was thinking, why do we have to do hard things? And it all comes down to this word, which is the coolest word ever, at least for today, and the word is capacity.
When you do hard things it increases your personal capacity to be able to do harder things. Then you do harder things and it increases your capacity to do even harder things. And you keep going through this process.
I kept thinking back, if I would have started Clickfunnels, let’s say I met Todd when we were both like eleven years old, back in the day and we would have launched Clickfunnels, it would have been a colossal failure, because we hadn’t done hard things yet, our capacity was not up to snuff. We wouldn’t have been able to handle the load of what’s come. I know everyone’s like, “Oh Clickfunnels is so fun and amazing and nice.” And it is, and it’s amazing, but I can’t tell you the stress and the pressure and the things that come down upon us almost on a daily basis that we have to figure out.
And it’s hard, and we do hard things and it increases our capacity and prepares us for the next thing, so we can do hard things, we can increase our capacity to do the next hard thing, so we keep moving forward and eventually take over the entire world, which is the goal and the game plan. People are like, “What is your 3 year goal?” To take over the world. Come on now. What’s yours?
So I want to share this because we know this is true. You see it in aspects of life, like if you want to lift weights and increase your capacity. You lift weights, you do hard things, you tear the muscles down, your muscles build up. You want to get stronger so you do hard things, you tear the muscles, they build up stronger.
But the same is true in all aspects of life. If you want to be amazing, if you want to change the world, if you want to grow a company, if you want to sell products, if you want to be famous, if you want to be an athlete, a superstar, whatever it is, you have to become really, really good and comfortable at doing really, really hard things, and being okay with it.
So my message for you guys today is simple. Those things that you look at and you’re like, “I don’t know if I want to do that, it’s going to be hard, I’m going to be tired, I’m already tired, I don’t want to do that.” All those things that come out of our face, you gotta stop and say, “You know what, I can do hard things. I’m go and I’m going to take this thing on. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, it’s going to be painful and not fun, necessarily, but I’m going to do hard things.” And then you do it and guess what happens? You figure out a way to do it and it increases your capacity.
When your capacity increases, then you do the next thing and you figure it out and increase your capacity and you keep doing that day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out. Guess what happens? In a year, two years, five years, ten years from now, you will be amazed at what you’ve been able to accomplish and what you’ve been able to do.
I look back now at my challenges from ten years ago and I’m like, dude I was such a wuss. I was whining about this thing that wasn’t really, nowadays I could do it juggling backwards on my head upside down. It would be super easy, because my capacity has gotten to a point where I can actually handle it.
So that’s true for you guys too. If you want, over the next year, ten years, decade or whatever it is of your life to really accomplish what it is you want to accomplish, you have to become good at doing hard things now. Because the only way to increase your capacity so you can be prepared to be do the next hard thing. So you can increase your capacity so you can be prepared for the next hard thing.
Everything in life is a progression. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs and you get closer and closer and closer to your mission, to your goal, to whatever it is you’re trying to do. It all comes down to doing hard things, which will increase your capacity, which then you can do more hard things and keep going through the cycle.
I was thinking a lot this week about Tony Robbins, he said something that most people they overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in a decade. I started thinking, I think a lot of are that way. Okay, I gotta be blah, and we have these big goals for what we want to do in the next year. It’s like, chillax on the whole year goal. Let it come, work hard, keep moving forward, but don’t stress about the year goal. But if you’re doing what I’m talking about, and you’re doing hard things, and you’re stretching your capacity and you’re consistently doing it, over a decade you’d be shocked at what’s possible.
Clickfunnels now, we’re not even three years old. Excuse me, we’re a little over three years old. We’re not even four years old yet. And I look at what’s been happening, and from the time we started, so probably five years. So half a decade. Half a decade from idea to where we are today, we’ve built this huge company and we’ve changed thousands of people’s lives around the world. It’s fascinating when you see what happened.
But if I would have been like, “I’m not going to hit my year goal because we’re spending all this time developing this weird thing called Clickfunnels and we’re losing all this money and I had to fire all these people.” All the stress that came around it ahead of time, we never would have got here. But we did hard things, increased our capacity, got better, did some more hard things, increased our capacity, got better, until eventually boom, out pops Clickfunnels. And then boom, out pops the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing.
I’m grateful that Clickfunnels didn’t start with 65,000 members or I probably would have crushed personally under the pressure of it. I’m sure that Todd would have, and Ryan, all of our team, we wouldn’t have been able to handle it because our capacity wasn’t ready. But we were able to grow with it.
That’s the nice thing about having kids. Everyone’s stressed out about having kids. “This is going to be so hard.” The good news is when the kids come out, they sleep most of the time.So you don’t have to be amazing, but as the kids get bigger, you increase your capacity, you get better at it, and eventually by the time they’re walking and toddling, you can keep up with them, and by the time they’re teenagers you’re able to keep up with them, because we’re growing with them. We’re doing hard things with them and we’re increasing capacity.
So I want you guys thinking about this, the mission you have in life, the goal, the reason why you’re here on this planet, my guess is right now you are not ready for it. You could not handle the strain and the capacity it would take for you to actually be successful in that thing today. For some of you guys, you’re like, “Screw that, I’m not even going to try. I’m going to go back and watch cartoons.” I understand that.
But instead, be like, okay, I have to figure out how to increase my capacity so that someday I will be worthy and able to handle this mission that God or the universe or whatever you want to call it is going to give you, and you’ve got to be prepared for that. So the way you get prepared for that right now is you do hard things.
So my question for you is what is the hard thing? That you’re looking at right now that you’re like, “I don’t know if I can or I should do that, it’s going to be so hard.” What is that thing, and just go do it. Just tackle it head on and destroy that thing and own it. Look at thing and go, “I own you.” And then go and dominate it.
So there you go you guys, today is the day to do hard work. Coach Leslie told me that if he could give his kids one piece of advice it would be do hard things. So for you your message for today is do hard things. And now you know the reason why, because you’re going to prepare yourself for the mission that’s eventually going to come to you. You’ve got to do hard things today to be ready for it.
There’s a quote that I’m going to slaughter, because I don’t know off the top of my head but, Winston Churchill said, “There comes a time in every man’s life, when he’ll be figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do something unique to him and his talents and his abilities. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for that work, which could have been his finest hour.”
Now is the time you guys, to start preparing. And you do that by doing hard things. With that said, I appreciate you guys all. Have an amazing day today, and I will talk to you all soon. Bye everybody.
What I learned from WWF, Disney, and Marvel about creating your own universe, so you can better serve your customers.
On this episode Russell talks about legends in marketing and wrestling that he has surpassed. He also explains why it is important to create a universe inside your company. Here are some super cool things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to find out how Russell has surpassed a few legends and how he’s been able to build his own universe inside of Clickfunnels.
---Transcript---
Hey, what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, tonight on the Marketing Secrets podcast I want to talk to you about creating your very own universe.
Hey everyone, I’m not sure if you listened to yesterday’s podcast but I recorded that like 5 minutes ago, and I’m still walking around the track and I just got excited about another idea that I want to share with you. So here we are.
So today when I was at my kid’s field day, all day, boiling in the sun I was listening to Dan Kennedy and man, I just love listening to Dan Kennedy’s stuff. Of all the marketing, of all the people I study, he’s the one I most consistently go back to. So take that for what it’s worth, I don’t know why. I think he is the most entertaining, he always stimulates my brain with these new ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and patterns, it’s really cool.
One thing that was interesting, this is kind of a tangent, hope you don’t mind. It’s funny, you know when you learn about legends, and there’s this legend and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this person is amazing.” After I gave Dan Kennedy, this huge, talked about how great he is, now I’m going to kind of tear him down accidentally. I don’t mean to, he’s still the man.
But it’s so funny, for example in the wrestling world, the greatest wrestler, the legend is Dan Gable. He’s like the Michael Jordan of our sport. He went through high school and college and didn’t lose any match. And his last match his senior in college, he lost it. And then he became so obsessed with that he started training again and ended up three years later winning a gold medal in the Olympics, and what’s crazy about it is not a single person scored on him in the Olympics. In fact, before going to the Olympics the Russians were like, “We’re going to create an athlete specifically designed to beat Dan Gable.” They just wanted to beat the American’s so bad.
That was the whole goal of the Russian team, “Let’s beat Dan Gable.” Which was crazy. And they, as legend goes Dan would work out for about 7 hours a day here in the states and then he’d have to go to bed at night. And then he knew as he was going to bed at night that the sun was rising in the Soviet Union, that the Russians were training and he couldn’t handle that, so he’d wake up at night and he’d go out and run at night because he didn’t want to be laying on his back sleeping while the Russians were training, which is so many cool metaphors.
So Dan is the man, he is the legend, he is wrestling. But what’s interesting now, you fast forward, and I’m actually going to give Dan credit for this. So Dan brought his style of wrestling to Iowa, the Hawkeyes, made the Hawkeyes the dominant team forever and everyone rose up to the Hawkeye level. And I look at wrestling today, it was built off the shoulders of Dan Gable. It’s pretty cool to watch.
But the other day I went back and I watched some of Dan Gable’s wrestling matches, because now we have YouTube and everything is archived, it’s so cool. I’m watching Dan Gable’s wrestling match, again, the legend, the Michael Jordan of wrestling, the greatest of all time. I’m watching these matches, in fact, I watched the match he lost his senior year in college. I’m watching this match and I’m like, this feels like a high school JV wrestling match. The level that we compete at today as a country is insane. It’s way better.
Most people nowadays could go back and would have competed against Gable and they would have destroyed him in his prime. But he was the legend and he pushed the sport forward and now you look at you know, fast forward however many, 40 years later and because of his influence this whole things has grown. But if you look at him pound for pound versus the dudes who win the NCA pound for pound, they would destroy Gable. It wouldn’t even be close.
So I tell you this story because I had this funny thing. When I was learning the public speaking world, I studied Kennedy. Kennedy would tell these stories, him going to these Peter Lowe events, there’d be 20 thousand people in the stadium, they’d be selling stuff, and that’s where I got my inspiration. That’s where I started studying and learning and where I mastered stage presenting because I wanted to be like Dan Kennedy, which is insane.
I studied him forever, and I studied all the people he trained. That’s my whole foundation of where Perfect Webinar and Expert Secrets book and all this stuff that I teach comes from. Fast forward to 3 or 4 months ago and I’m speaking at Grant Cardone’s 10x event and there’s 9 thousand people in the room. I remember thinking, I bet this is what it was like when Kennedy spoke at the old Peter Lowe events when there was 20 or 30 thousand people in the stadium. Can you imagine, they would do that once a month around different parts of the country. They were on these circuits and they were speaking and I was like, he must have made so much money.
I did my pitch, made $3 million dollars in 90 minutes and I’m just like, I am experiencing a little bit of what Dan Kennedy experienced. And then what’s crazy, it’s so crazy. So I’m listening to him today in his training course and he’s talking about Peter Lowe events again, and I’m boom, pulled back a decade ago when I was first learning about stage presenting and all this stuff, and what was crazy, as he’s telling these stories and he’s talking about how much money he would make at a Peter Lowe event, he said, “We’d have 20 thousand people in the room, I knew exactly how much money I would make. I would average from a typical stage presentation in that room, I would walk away with $100,000 in my pocket.”
I was like, “Wait, what?” which means he would make $250,000 or so, he’d get half of it, that’s the way the speaking world works. He’d walk away with 100,000 and take that home every single time. He’s like, “I’d speak twice a week, sometimes. But at least once a month, but I was making over a million bucks a year as a speaker.” I was like, “What?” This comes back to my Dan Gable. I’m like, “Dan Gable, if I would have lived when you lived and I was as good as I was today, I could have beat you at a wrestling match. I could have beat Dan Gable, the legend. How crazy is that.”
Now I’m looking at this and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve literally beat the Dan Gable of the marketing world. I beat Dan Kennedy. I did more in 90 minutes than he did in an entire year at the Peter Lowe events, speaking at 20 thousand plus persons multiple times throughout the year.” Anyway, it just blew my mind.
So that’s one of those weird things, but if you look at it like, if it wasn’t for Dan Kennedy’s influence on me and his influence on other speakers that I learned from, this whole thing, he evolved the entire thing to put it where it’s at today. But I bet you right now, especially after going back and looking at, recently Dan’s old presentations and old pitches, my guess is any of you guys that master the perfect webinar could out sell Dan without even blinking. In fact, I would bet a lot of money on that.
So it’s fascinating. I don’t know why I went on that rant for the last 6 ½ minutes, but I thought it was interesting. So there you go. So let me praise Dan again now, because he is the man. I’m talking about both Dan Gable, in case he listens to this someday, and he’s like, “Russell, you’re a punk.” No Dan, you are the man. So please, all bow to the legend Dan Gable, you are the man, I love you. Same with Dan Kennedy, so I’m going to talk about Kennedy though. Like I just said, of all the guys that I study, it always comes back to him, he’s the one I study and learn from, I love it.
In the course I was going through today, which is crazy, 5 hours of being out in the sun on 1 ½ times speed, which means I got like 8 hours of Kennedy smushed in my brain today, which was really, really fun. And a bunch of cool things wrapped around that I could share. I could do days worth of podcasts on the cool stuff I learned, but this is the one that was really, really fascinating.
So he was talking about companies, and he spent a lot of time talking about Disney and about their enterprise and how Disney works. How it was created, how it was crafted, how they built these universes and inside there’s characters and there’s storylines and there’s all these things happening inside the context of this universe that Disney’s created. Then he started talking about Jim McMahon, the WWF, talking about this universe. There’s opponents and people and fans and merchandise, he built this entire universe. There’s good guys, there’s bad guys, and people want to live in and experience this universe.
Then I started thinking about WWF, excuse me not WWF, the MMA. Looking at that whole world that Dana White created. It’s this whole universe. He started talking about other ones, he talked about Playboy and Penthouse, and Hustler. Anyway, from all sorts of aspects of life, from Disney to pornography and filth and everything in between.
But he talked about these companies that are so big. He started talking about the net worth of these individuals. He talked about, I can’t remember exactly, the WWF dude, Jim McMahon, or whatever his name is. I think WWF does like 2 or 3 billion dollars a year and McMahon’s net worth is 500 million dollars or something crazy like that. He said the reason why he’s had so much success, the reason why these things live on beyond a product or anything is they created an entire universe.
Inside that universe there’s all these things. There’s characters, there’s heroes, there’s villains, there’s storylines, there’s all this stuff, there’s merchandise, there’s all these things that have been created. Then he said, “You know, I’ve tried to create some portion of that here inside of GKIC.” and I started, again, started flashing back to a decade ago when I first got into GKIC world, which is Glazier Kennedy Inner Circle, and I joined Bill Glazier’s mastermind and I started going to Dan Kennedy events.
I remember because I’d listen to all the CD’s ahead of time, and I would hear these stories about these people. The Ron LeGrand’s of the world, and Rory Fatt and I’m blanking off the top of my head all of these guys. John Alanis and all these people who are using Dan Kennedy style marketing. I remember listening to his tapes and I remember going to these events, this universe and I remember seeing these people I’d heard about. I heard them on CD’s and tapes and Dan talking about them. I remember meeting them and shaking their hands and being so awkward and so nervous and wanting to get autographs.
I remember going there and buying Dan Kennedy t-shirts and courses. I was in this marketing, nerdy universe. I started thinking about that and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Without really knowing pieces of it, and obviously I’ve known pieces of it, you’ve read Expert Secrets, I talked about creating a mass movement and trying to take people. But I was like, if you really look at this, I feel like inside of the Funnel Hacker movement, inside Clickfunnels. We’ve created a universe.
And it’s not just, it’s multifaceted. I remember when Todd and I were first brainstorming on Clickfunnels, one thing he said, “I want to build something that creates a whole ecosystem of other companies around it. We kind of saw this a little bit with InfusionSoft, they didn’t really capitalize on it that well. But I want people who’s full time jobs are using Clickfunnels to help businesses.”
It’s funny, we were, I was speaking at this government thing, you guys probably heard the episode a couple of podcasts back. But before that, I was trying to figure out, how many jobs have been created inside the Clickfunnels universe? I was like, you know what, as of today we’re at 64 or 65 thousand members, let’s just say each of those entrepreneurs are using Clickfunnels, it becomes a job. So 65 thousand jobs right there. But the average company has anywhere from 3 to 30 employees, so let’s say 3, so it’s conservative. So 60 thousand turns into 100 thousand.
And then you think about the other businesses that have popped up. The agencies, the designers and the freelancers, and the copywriters, and the customer support. All these other sub-jobs that come. And then you look at when somebody, when we sell t-shirts, there’s the entire t-shirt company, there’s all those jobs that are created. When we’re selling physical products, books, CD’s….When I do a bestselling book, it’s not just me that makes money on that. There are the publishers, the printers.
We were trying to do the math and we got to about half a million jobs conservatively created because Clickfunnels is a thing. Half a million jobs and probably more than that, but that’s what we were able to draw a line to as we were doing our low case estimates. So it’s probably more than that.
So in this universe it’s created half a million jobs. Inside of it there are heroes. I look at, you know, people I talk about all the time, speakers at Funnel Hacking Live, the stories I tell on my podcasts, and my Facebook Lives and my different places. These people become heroes, and then besides heroes there’s villains.
I remember, if you guys watched the book launch last year, we had Julie Stoian who is like the hero and Dan Henry who is like the villain, and there’s fighting back and forth and there’s things happening. It’s just crazy.
You come to our events and we’ve literally done two comic book animated videos at the events. We’ve got t-shirts that everybody buys, we have people right now who will only where Clickfunnels clothes. We have our swag store coming out where we have socks and watches and hats and coats and merchandise.
Anyway, it’s fascinating because, I always tell people this and you’ve probably heard me talk about this, the hardest part is seeing the pattern, but as soon as you see the pattern and you’re aware of it, then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, now I see the pattern, now I can amplify it.” So now that I’m aware that my job is to create this universe, it’s like, wow how do I actually create this universe? How do I create super heroes?
If you’re at the Funnel Hacking Live event when Kaelin Poulin got onstage she talked about how you have to give your customers an identity shift. You’re shifting their identity and you’re bringing them into your universe. They’re coming to this universe to have a whole new identity. And then what she said was so cool. They make millions of dollars of their swag drops. Twice a month they do swag drops, they sell clothing, and they said the swag drops, the clothing is like giving a cape to a super hero. They’ve had an identity shift and now you’re giving them a super hero cape and now they are a part of this person.
I was like, oh my gosh. That’s what we’re doing, we’re bringing people in this universe to give them an identity shift. We’re giving them a cape in clothing, we’re giving them a name, a place to belong, and it’s just excited.
Anyway, I shared that with you because today as I was sitting there in the heat listening to him talk about these companies and the universes that have been created, that people were plugging into, that is the new vision, that’s the pattern. Now that I’m aware of it, it’s like, how can I amplify it? What else can I do? What did WWF do to build their universe? What did Marvel do? What has DC done? What has Disneyland done?
Now it’s time to start studying these companies that have built these universes and try to replicate and figure out what they’re doing. So that’s the next thing I’m going to be geeking out on. So I just wanted to share with you guys, so hopefully you guys can start that journey with me. It’s been fun.
One of the cool side benefits or side effects of me being in this role of the chief cheerleader of Clickfunnels is I get to share these thoughts I have and I get to test them out on our community. And then I get to see people who are grabbing onto them and implementing the same stuff. It’s fascinating.
When we started this whole Funnel Hacker movement and I was like, I think I’m onto something. It was like an inner circle meeting where I shared it and Brandon and Kaelin were there, and Kaelin’s company at the time, Brandon and Kaelin’s company, it was Tuelle Time Fitness, which was Kaelin’s maiden name. And after talking about the Funnel Hacker movement, people need to self identify with the cause and the movement. And she was like, “Oh my gosh, no one is ever going to self identify with my last name.”
So on the flight home she sat there, “I gotta change everything.” And they had a million dollar business and they still were like, “We have to change everything, if we’re going to actually take this to the next level we have to shift our branding, our name, everything.” Which is crazy. I guarantee 99% of people, if they would have heard me in that same room they would have been like, “Nope, my brand is good. People know who I am.”
Instead they’re like, “No, if we want to get to the next level, we have to change everything.” So they went and changed, on the flight home she renamed it, she landed and voxed me like, “Russell, it’s Lady Boss Weight Loss, we’re starting our movement.” I’m like, “What? You changed?” “Yep, we’re deleting everything, we’re changing everything. We’re on.” And boom, within weeks the whole thing was moved over and it was launched and it was rocking and rolling, which is just insane.
They’re doing stuff, and they’re pushing the edge, they’re teaching me stuff now. I’m like, oh my gosh. This is so cool. I look at Alison Prince came into our world a little over a year ago. Some of you guys know she spoke at Funnel Hacking Live this year, and same type of thing. We’re talking about these movements and talking about Lady Boss, and she was like, “Well how do I create my own movement, my own universe, my own whatever you want to call it?”
So she created one called The Because I Can Clan. Why do you call it that? Because I can. Why do we do this? Because I can. She’s like, “I want to create people that have the ability to do whatever they want in life because they can. I don’t want people that can’t do that.” So she created this movement called the Because I can Clan. And now she’s doing it and she’s taking this and building a whole community and she’s made millions of dollars now inside of her business, but she’s building a movement and people are having success with it, and it comes back to this whole concept of because I can.
And now she’s doing this and I’m able to watch what she’s doing. I’m like, all these things I’m learning back from her, because she’s taken this idea. So in case you’re wondering, why does Russell share all this random stuff that he’s thinking about? It’s because I love it when I share it and I see you guys implement as well. Because we all have different perspective on it.
When I hear universe, I think of one thing, you hear something else. The way I implement is going to be different than the way you implement. So please take this stuff and implement it, if you’ve got a business. If you don’t have a business yet, listen to yesterday’s episode and let’s get something up and cranking for you so then you can start geeking out and going deeper on these things.
But if you’ve got something happening, start thinking about this. This is a world we create. You think about just the comic books, DC and Marvel. Think about how many movies are in that franchise and what’s happening, it’s been fun to watch. I was never a comic book guy growing up, but man, I’ve been obsessed with the movies because it’s so fun to see what they’ve done inside these universes and how they bring all the characters together. It’s exciting, there’s a lot to learn from it, that we can apply back to our businesses.
Alright guys, with that said, this is one of my longer podcasts. I didn’t know what I was going to talk about and I got excited. There you go. Appreciate you all, you guys. Now it’s time to start crafting and creating your own universes. With that said, appreciate you. If you love this podcast or get anything from it, please go to iTunes and subscribe. We’re going to be doing a lot of new stuff here in the very near future, with the new channel and I’m excited and would love to have your guys’ feedback. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day, night, where you are in the world, and we’ll talk to you soon.