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.