Step 1 starts with the bat-signal calling everybody to the bat-cave…
On today’s episode Russell talks about how he is using Trello and a bat signal to make all of his amazing ideas come to fruition. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode.
-Find out how Russell is using a bat signal to get his ideas out to his team.
-See how Trello is going to help keep Russell’s ideas organized so that every member does their part.
-And find out how you can make a similar system work for your own team.
So listen here to be let in on this awesome new system for getting Russell’s ideas out of his head and turned into funnels.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, I’m heading into the office today for a fun filled day. It’s going to be short because it’s almost Christmastime and we thought it would be fun to do something out of the ordinary. Everyone’s working their butt off and at the end of the day we’re going to leave early to go and see the Star Wars movie, which I’m freaking out about because I haven’t seen it yet. I want to see it so bad. Everyone’s got the positive and the negative reviews and all that stuff, and I don’t care what they say, there’s no way I’m not going to like it. I’m so excited.
So I’m pumped about that. Also, we have an acupuncturist who’s coming into the office to poke people all day. So I’ll be going through a session today, which I’m excited for. I don’t know how acupuncture works, but I had a miraculous healing from it one time, so I’m a big believer. And I’m not even hurt, I just feel like I want more people poking needles into my body apparently. So that’s exciting.
But what I want to share with you is the most exciting thing of all. So excited. It’s funny that we’ve grown as big a company as we have, with the fact that I’m not the best systems person in the world. I’m a big believer in it, just not ever been good at it. And Mr. James P. Freill, who is amazing. In the inner circle and been my friend for probably 3 years or so now. He came in originally and set up our Trello system, and it worked really good for a week, and me as a bad manager of it, it kind of fell apart. I hired him again later, he came back and set it up again, it worked for a while and then fell apart.
And then the third time I did it, so three times he’s helped me set this process up and the third time it lasted longer and then eventually kind of fell apart as well. So eventually I was just like, you know what, how about we just hire you to actually come and run this thing for us. So we hired him for the next six months and he literally moved to Boise, like a block from the office, which has been really fun.
And now he’s living next to me as we’re doing everything and systemizing everything. And what we’ve been focusing on is something I think everybody should do. Because as you know, you’ve listened to my opinion on this before, your business is not the thing that you do or sell, the business is the marketing of the thing you sell. So I think every company, the real company is your own marketing and advertizing agency. That is the company. And then what you sell is incidental, it doesn’t really matter. I can plug in chiropractic, I can plug in dentistry, I can plug in supplements, it doesn’t matter. Your business is the marketing.
So I was like, we need to build a marketing agency where we are our only clients. So we build this marketing agency out and there’s a funnel building team in the agency and there’s the traffic team, and it’s been really fun because he’s going through all the stuff we’ve been doing for the last decade that we redo every single time and he’s been trello-izing it and systemizing it and all sorts of stuff.
But the biggest thing we realized, when I have an idea, it’s like the idea, I have that moment where it’s like the flood of inspiration. And for me, I don’t know if it’s this way for everybody, I’m assuming that, I wasn’t this way when I began, but the longer I’ve done it and the more I’ve immersed myself in it, when I have the idea, I see the whole thing in my head. I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s not a vision, I don’t know, maybe it’s a vision. But it’s like, as soon as the idea comes, all these connections, all the things, everything I’ve learned and done and seen over the last 15 years in this business, it’s like as soon as the idea hits, I see perfect clarity what it looks like. I know, I see it really fast.
Then I freak out and try to explain it to everybody really fast, which is why I talk so fast, because I’m trying to get it out of my head before I forget it. I’m trying to explain the whole thing. And usually, whoever is closest to me, I grab and I explain it. So usually it’s Dave’s there, Melanie’s there, sometimes Dave’s there, Steven’s there, whoever. I just grab people and I’m like, “AHHH” and I freak out and tell them the whole thing.
And everyone’s excited and we go and run and do our things. But then we try to relay that to the next part of the team and then next part of the team. And eventually it’s like, playing telephone booth and everyone forgets and then, even Dave and Steven who were there initially, they’re like, “Remember on the white board we doodled this thing.” And they’re like, “What’s that square again for? I have no idea what’s actually happening. I remember you had a squiggly line here that was really important, but it just looks like a squiggly line now and I’m not sure exactly was it is.” And we always try to…we lose all this stuff.
So we’re like, man, how do we capture that moment of inception when the first big idea hits? How do we capture that so we don’t lose it? So in our trello process system now, it’s so cool. We’ve done it twice to test it out. But we literally…the way it works is like step one we have the aha moment, this is the idea. And the second we have that, I log into voxer and there’s a group with the entire agency in the voxer group and I literally send them the a gif of the bat signal. So boom, they get that which means, “oh my gosh, Russell had an idea. Get to the bat room.”
So then we set up the Zoom room, which is a Zoom room, we call it like the bat line or the bat cave or something like that. So as soon as I set out the bat signal then every…then I’ll send out the direct link to the bat cave, then everybody who is able to jumps on. And then right there I open the Zoom Room on my computer, from a white board I’m like, “Oh my gosh guys..” and I explain the whole thing as it happens and it records the whole thing.
So the whole thing’s being recorded and I go through the whole thing and anyone who’s able to come, comes. And obviously not everybody can come every single time. But whoever’s there comes, we explain the whole thing, we get excited, and I map out the vision on the white board, I explain things and then when I’m done I break down, “okay here’s the whole vision. I need so and so to do this part, so and so to do this,” and I explain all the different pieces. And then when it’s done, I stop the recording, upload it dropbox, post it in trello, here’s the vision and then here’s the, I take a picture of the whiteboard, here’s the whiteboard of the vision, here’s the video of the vision. And then I vox that out to everybody who may have missed the call. Here it is.
And then that happens and the person on our team who does the project management stuff, which right now is James and John, but eventually we’re going to be bringing in somebody full time to do this part, then goes and watches it second by second and basically builds out all the trello cards based on the vision. And then everyone’s got their stuff, trello cards, deadlines, everything. And it just all magically happens and it is the coolest thing in the world.
So we did it twice, two days ago and then yesterday. We’ve done two bat meetings. These aren’t like new aha moments, but it’s like new funnels we’re relaunching, so everyone’s got a little piece of this puzzle that I have in my head and we’re all working towards it, except for now everyone knows the whole vision.
And it’s insane, just the clarity, for me and I think everyone on the team has now, it’s just like, “Oh, that’s what Russell’s talking about.” Or people are like, I’m watching the office when I walk around, they’re rewatching the video like, “Oh, that’s what he’s talking about.” Or like, “In minute six of the video you said this, what did you mean again?” And then I can, it’s just really cool. It’s simplifying our process, I’m not repeating and re-teaching and re-explaining and re-showing things a million times.
Oh, and the other cool thing is after we got the whole thing done, then Jake on my team, he’s taking my whiteboard doodle and then he actually is going into Photoshop or illustrator or whatever he uses, and if you got the Funnel Hacker Cookbook, you know the little images of the pages and funnels, he’s actually building out a map for the funnel I sketched out in that , so we have a pdf of the actual map of what I doodled out, but it’s very specific. Like, “Here’s page one, page two, page three. Here’s the email sequence. Each sequence is here and goes to here.” We have an actual map we’re building off of as well, as opposed to some doodles I gave out.
Anyway, it’s just getting really, really cool so I’m excited. We’re systemizing the crap out of everything, we’re speeding up our processes, we’re making it so we remove me from a lot of the things I’ve been doing, just because they’re stuck in my head, and getting out into a spot where other people can help facilitate it. And it feels good, it feels freeing, it feels exciting.
So there’s an idea for those of you guys who are trying to figure this process out and trying to get the vision from your mind out to your team. Do a batman meeting like we’re doing. Send out a bat signal, bring them all to the bat cave, record your ideas, and then you’ve got it archived as everyone starts building and driving traffic and all those other pieces that come with it. That’s it, I’m excited.
Anyway, I heading in right now, I’m going to get some acupuncture, work on some funnels, I’m probably doing the batman meeting, we have four projects we’re trying to do by the end of the year. So I’m doing four bat meetings to catch everybody up, then we’ll have all our marching orders before the end of the year, then I’m heading to go see the new Star Wars. So excited. Alright guys, that’s all I got. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you guys soon, bye.