Two guys joined our “Inner Circle” on the same day, one quit. Where are they at now, 12 months later?…
On today’s episode Russell tells a story about a friend of his, Mike Stazyk, who took a risk and how it paid off. He also talks about why taking risks is important for growing your business and how to set Lead or Gold deadlines.
Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:
So listen below to hear an interesting story about a kid who went from knowing nothing about marketing to making it big by taking some risks.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone! It’s Russell and it’s literally three in the morning right now. I’m driving home, and this is another very special, exciting episode of Marketing in Your Car.
All right, so I guess it’s three a.m., I’ve just dropped someone off at the Hyatt place, and I wanted to tell you a story about him.
So his name is Mike Stanzic. Some of you guys may know him. If not, you should get to know him, he’s amazing.
But Mike, he’s here in town because we’re trying to film a kind of promotional video with him, talking about our coaching program, and just kind of hang out with him and have a good time and it’s been really cool, and I wanted to tell you guys a story about him because it’s pretty impressive.
Actually, I’m going to tell you two stories, and these two stories are going to illustrate why he is successful, and why -- if you’re struggling, if you’re struggling to be successful right now at this time in your life -- you need to look at what he’s doing, and it’ll help you understand what you need to do to get where you want to be.
So Mike was a college kid. He had dropped out of college and was like trying to figure out what he wanted to do. I think he said he had like $23,000 in his bank account that was meant -- that he had saved up for his college tuition.
He went to this Tony Robbins event, and at the Tony Robbins he met this guy, and they kind of became friends and stuff, and Mike didn’t know anything about Internet marketing.
He was involved in a network marketing program but didn’t know anything about Internet marketing, and this other guy was big, like had been studying Internet marketing.
And so after the Tony event, they were driving home, and they were just kind of talking, and this guy was telling Mike all about Internet marketing and how it worked and all these cool things, and Mike was like, “Well, I could use that for my Internet marketing business.”
And anyway, his friend basically said, “Hey, there’s this guy. His name is Russell Brunson, and I wanted to join his coaching program. It’s really expensive, but it’s going to change my whole life, and I think you should join it, too. We should join it together. It would be awesome!”
And so Mike got excited, and said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s join this thing together,” and so they joined.
And so, anyway, so this is the next Monday, so next Monday we get a phone call at our office from the buddy, and he signs up for our $25,000 Inner Circle Program, and then like four hours later Mike calls up and signs up for the $25,000 Inner Circle Program.
And I guess what happened, you know, Mike told me the story now, is that his buddy was like, “Hey man, I’m going to do it! I’m going to do it!” And he’s like, then he called Mike, “Hey, I did it! I sent the check in. The money is going, like I’m in, and you need get in, too.”
So Mike is like, “All right, I’m in,” so he went in and actually did it. Wrote a check, sent it in. Got involved in the program, and basically, yeah, he got in the program.
And then, Mike called the guy back like later on that day or maybe it was the next day and to talk about it, and the guy was like, “Aw! I couldn’t afford it.” Mike is like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, I couldn’t afford it.”
He’s like, “Are you kidding me? You couldn’t afford to like… Like you just told me you sent a check. Well, I wrote a check based on that.” Like he said, “I send my college tuition on this thing. It was like every penny I had in my bank account.”
And the guy was like, “Sorry I can't do it,” and so Mike was like stuck at this point, and, you know, the buddy called us and canceled. But Mike had stayed in and basically Mike was like, “You know what? I committed to this. I can't… I got to do it.”
So he went through and did it. He showed up at our next Mastermind meeting or our first workshop, as green as green can be. The guy didn’t know anything about Internet marketing or anything.
And we started the Mastermind group and there’s 18 people or so in this group, and each person is supposed to get up and present their business, and before I started it, I said, you know, “Does anyone want to go first?”
And Mike jumps right up and stands in front of the room -- doesn’t know anything about anything! Stands up there, starts drawing a picture of his supplement that he sold through his MLM, and said, “This is what I have,” and that was it, and so we started working on this thing.
Man, he just jumped in and just worked hard and spent the next four months, building out his first funnel and launching it. Making some money, and then kept going from there and ended up learning how to drive traffic, and just kept growing and evolving.
I’ve been watching him do this stuff, and anyway he came today, he was kind of talking about what he’s doing. I didn’t realize his last week alone he made 10 grand.
Last month I think it was close to like 30 grand or something crazy like that, and what was interesting is that he told me that his buddy, the guy that had signed up and then canceled, basically had just reapplied for school because he’s frustrated and his business hasn’t grown.
He’s just stagnated and he was going back to school now to figure out Option B, and it was just kind of cool to see this tale of two people, right? Two people who started at the exact same situation, both made the same commitment.
One followed through and one didn’t, and where is their life at now? What’s the difference? You know, what’s been happening, and it’s just kind of cool to see that.
And just to kind of like put you in perspective of like the type of person that he is, he was telling me a story tonight that he wanted do this partnership with this guy that he was going to be calling, and it was for this mortgage broker thing.
The guy told him, “Hey, you need to start cold calling mortgage brokers,” and Mike was like, “All right.” So he grabbed a phone book and starting cold calling mortgage brokers. He didn’t even know what the pitch was but started dialing numbers, and saying, “Hey, so we’ve got this thing…”
And didn’t even know what it was, and was trying to like explain this thing, and he didn’t even know what it was. The first one went and it totally bombed, so Mike called the guy back, “Hey, it bombed, but this is what I said…”
And the guy is like, “Well, that’s not what we’re selling. This is what we’re doing,” and so he kind of tweaked it.
Anyway, he kept dialing, and just cold calling mortgage brokers out of a phone book; selling a product he didn’t even know what it was, just because the guy said, “you need to do it.”
And he just jumped in and did it and did it and did it and boom! And eventually landed like four or five mortgage brokers in this deal, and just did it, and I was telling him how impressive it is for me.
Like he’s the kind of person when he just moves forward and he hits something, and then he just keeps moving forward, he keeps moving forward and he keeps moving forward.
And I told him how rare that is, like people don’t just do that. Like most people, they start moving forward, they hit something and they stop, and then they stop.
Maybe they’ll move forward again, they hit something, they stop. And the reason why he’s successful is because he doesn’t stop. When he hit something he keeps going and he keeps going. He doesn’t let fear or excuses or no money or whatever, he doesn’t let the fact that he doesn’t even know what the product is, stop him.
He just goes and goes and goes and goes, and I look at this kid now, 20… I think he’s 22 or 23-years-old. You know, he’s ten years younger than me, and this is a guy who’s got the world on his fingertips.
He can literally do whatever he wants now. Because he just brute-forced through this, he understands funnels and traffic, and I’ve seen him build funnels now for himself and other people, and he’s learned the process and it’s just… it’s amazing.
And so, I wanted to share that story, first off, because it inspired the heck out of me, and hopefully inspires the heck out of you as well. I hope that it makes you guys look at yourself, and then kind of look internal and look at like what are the things that keep you from moving forward sometimes?
You know, it’s kind of funny, on the flip side of that I had a phone call today with another person who joined our coaching program, who signed up, went through the initial program.
Went through my initial consult I do with them, where I kind of steer them in the right direction. I map out a business model, a funnel for them, and gave them everything on a silver platter, and then for two months he didn’t do anything.
And then, two months later he calls me and is like, “Hey, so I haven’t done anything. I can't remember what you wanted me to do. Can we do another call, so that you can re-explain to me what you told me two months ago?”
I was like, “No, like if you didn’t take notes, if you’re not paying attention, I’m not going to do it for you again.” Like, and then, the guy said like, “Oh, well, if I can't talk to you on the phone, I want a refund for my money.”
All these things, and I was like, “Dude, like two months ago I gave you a business model on a silver platter. Since then you’ve had the ability to Vox me any time you want. How many times have you Voxed me? Zero.
“You’ve had a chance to inbound call my two business partners every single week. How many times have you inbound called them? Zero.”
You know, and it’s just this guy who’s frustrated and upset, and look at him versus Mike, what’s the difference? Okay, one person doesn’t make excuses.
One person doesn’t let… I don’t know what would get in the way. One person doesn’t let any… just moves forward, and knows that success is right there and just goes and grabs it.
Where another person, I don’t know if he’s been there for two months. He hasn’t been working, that’s for dang sure, and now wants to blame it on me or blame it on whoever and it just drives me crazy.
And so, I want to make sure that you guys are more like Mike. Not like Mike’s friend, or not like the other guy that I’m talking about. Don’t be that kind of a person, you guys. I want you to be successful.
So anyway, I hope that helps. It’s three in the morning. I’m so tired, I don’t even know if anything I said even makes any sense, but that’s how it works.
So, you guys, if you’ve come to my events before or heard me talk about this, I talk a lot about a concept called Lead or Gold, where when I set goals or have ideas, I always set what I call a Lead or Gold Deadline.
And that story comes from -- I heard John, John Carlton, and Gary Halbert tell the story years ago, where they talk about how like the Mexican mafia, how when they need something to happen, right?
They go to the government and they say, “Hey, we need to change this law, so that we can get more drugs,” or whatever, right? And the government is like “No, we can't do that. That’s stupid. Like we’ll never do that.”
They say, “Okay, that’s fine.” And then, that night they’ll break into the government leaders’ homes and they’ll jump, you know, come and grab them and hold a gun to their head, and hold the gun in one hand in a bag of gold in another hand and say:
“Hey, you know what I talked about earlier today? You need to change it, right now, and you’ve got two options: Number one is lead, and you’re going to die. Or option number two is gold, where you’re going to take my bribe, and those two options, Lead or Gold.”
And when those are your options, Lead or Gold, it’s pretty easy to take the gold, okay? And so for me whenever I try to get something done in my business, I set what I call Lead or Gold Deadlines.
Like this has to happen, right now, and I do not deviate from it. I set these deadlines in there. In my mind, they are Lead or Gold. I will die if I do not create this deadline, and that’s why I’m out at three in the morning.
Because I set a Lead or Gold Deadline on a project that I’m doing tomorrow, and it’s 3:09, and I’m finally getting home because my Lead or Gold Deadline, I had to hit it. I didn’t have the opportunity to weasel out of it.
And anyway, that’s one thing I do, you guys, to help me be successful and help make sure I get stuff done.
So anyhoo, I’m home. I’m done. I need some sleep because I’ve got to be up in four hours to go and give the presentation I just finished a few minutes ago.
But I appreciate you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. I hope that you got something from this podcast.
I appreciate you guys. Go out and conquer, go serve the world in your way. Change somebody’s life today, and if you do that, all the stuff we talk about is going to be worth it.
So thanks, you guys, I appreciate you, and we’ll talk soon.