Reflections on a move towards hope as opposed to our move towards hopelessness.
On this special moving day episode Russell talks about moving into his new office and why this time is so different from the last time he moved offices.
Here are some of the things you will hear on today’s episode:
So listen below to hear Russell reminisce about some of the struggles he’s had in the past.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and welcome to a moving day of Marketing in Your Car.
All right, so today, I’m actually in the car right now. In the back of my car, I’ve got a bunch of my computer monitors and stuff. And I’m actually moving across town to a brand new office and it’s exciting.
We have the movers actually coming tomorrow to do all the heavy lifting of desks and all that crap that I don’t want to do but I got my own computer and monitors because I don’t want them to screw that up, so heading over there right now, and I’m driving and just reminiscing on some stuff.
And I wanted to share because I thought, hey, you guys like hearing all the random thoughts that come out of Russell’s head, right? So I apologize but that’s what we’re going to do because I think I got something that could benefit some of you guys.
I was just talking to Brent on my team as we’re packing up the cars and kind of walking. We actually moved into this building about four years ago now which is crazy. I can’t believe it’s that far away. When we left to come to this office, it was under completely different circumstances.
At the time, a year prior, I had about 100 employees, we were doing about a million dollar a month. Everything was cranking. We were having some fun. Looking back now, we weren’t very profitable with that big of a staff but we were making money and serving people, and all that kind of thing.
One day -- it was in January -- all of our merchant accounts got frozen, got shut down and just gone. It’s kind of a long, the next 12 months of my life was by far some of the hardest of my life. I had to watch as my friends and family members walked away from me, watched as my business I had built kind of disappeared.
I watched as bill collectors and angry people - all this stuff just happened. It was crazy. I thought I was going to have to go bankrupt but luckily I didn’t which was kind of a whole story for another day. But after a year of trying to keep everything open and keep things sustained, one day, I just came to the realization that I couldn’t.
We got hit with on top of all the debt and all the other issues that had come because of not having merchant accounts, and not having the ability to process money and still having payroll, staff, coaching clients, and all this craziness, on top of it, we got hit with an IRS bill of crazy money, like $150,000, $200,000, something just ridiculous. And all these things were collapsing around beside me.
I remember just being in a state of fear, panic, nervousness, and just hopelessness to be honest. I was sitting in my home. I knew that we had to leave out of the office we were in. We had a huge office, over 20,000 square feet. It was amazing.
It overlooked all of Boise. It was the coolest office in Boise by far. I knew I had to leave. I knew that if I left, they were probably going to sue me because we still had time left on our lease and contract but we had to. We couldn’t cover the monthly payments anymore, and all these.
I’m painting not even a very deep picture of where it was at, but it was crazy. I was sitting there one night on my little iPad trying to find an office we could move into. It was just crazy. I found this little office space that was four minutes from my home.
It was one or two in the morning I found it. I got out of bed, jumped to my car, and I drove to it. It was less than five minutes from my house. I looked through the windows, and I was like, “This is it. This is the office we have to rebuild and get back to basics.”
The next morning, I called the people up. We were able to rent it. It was about one tenth the size of our old office. At that time, we had gone from 100 employees down to about 20. We had to jam 20 employees in this little tiny space. We had to rebuild and figure things out.
Over the next year or so, I had to fire employee after employee. We got smaller and smaller to the point we ended up with about seven people at one time. And I said, “You know, these are seven people I have to have to run my business. Everyone else was nice to have. These are the got to haves. I can’t go any lower than this.”
I also made a rule at the time. I will not ever hire again. That was kind of my thing. For the last four years, we’ve been in that building and for the first year or two was trying to rediscover who we are and what we were doing. Then I went to this phase of wanting to be in every business possible.
We launched like 15 different companies in every niche you could dream of and did a lot of stuff, had some successes, nothing that was really huge. Then two years ago or so is when we launched our supplement which became very successful as a lot of you guys know. We became insane about split testing.
Then we came out with our split testing book which helped. We relaunched our coaching program which has been amazing. We launched ClickFunnels last year which is growing like nothing ever, better than anything I ever dreamed of.
Today as we’re moving, I just had this nostalgic feeling of four years ago when we were moving into this building. At that time, I was so nervous and scared, fearful and hopeless, and just afraid of what my future was going to look like. Now four years later as we’re moving out and we’re moving to a new office, just the different perspective, how excited I am about life and about business, and about who we’re serving, and about the future.
It just was so interesting to me because of today. I had this emotional thing. I just wanted to share it with you guys. I think the main reason why I wanted to share it is because I know that all of you guys are in different spots in your business. Some of you guys are in the spot where I’m at right now where things are going amazing and you feel hopeful, excited, and this desire to serve people, and try to change the world.
But some of you guys I know are on the opposite side where I was at, where you’re falling down a black hole and you don’t know how you’re going to get out, where you’re going to go, and you’re scared, hopeless, and you just have so much fear. I remember waking up some days and being so scared to go in the office because I didn’t know what to do and how to motivate people.
What pep talk was I going to give my team this time to try to convince them that we were going to be okay? How many times I would have to do that, over and over again. It was crazy hard. I hope that if you are on that backslide and you’re in the spot with your business or your life, it’s tough. You’re struggling.
You can’t see the future and the future makes you scared. I just want to share this message with you to hopefully give you some hope. You know, they always say that the night is darkest right before the dawn. It’s true. There were times where I couldn’t even tell you, it felt like I was in the pit of despair.
Now, such a short period of time later, I just feel so much hope, excitement, and passion. Again, if you are in that spot now, I just want to let you know that you’re not far. Keep trekking through it. Don’t give up. Keep moving forward because the light is on the other side.
When you get back to that spot, it’s amazing and it makes it all worth it. I look back at those things now that we had to go through, and it sucked. It was painful, it was embarrassing, it was hard but if it wasn’t for those things, we wouldn’t have been able to create and do what we did that got us to the spot we’re at right now.
I’m so grateful for those things. I always look back at the day when we lost our merchant accounts as the worst day in my life but I also look at it as the best day of my life because it is what caused us to change, and it was a necessary change. For me, it helped me to find out who my true friends were, who were people I could count on, who were people I could trust, who were people that cared about me and not about the paycheck they were getting which was important, and it also gave us the ability to think clearer.
It’s hard. First of all, I didn’t feel like I was thinking clear but at some point, you got to step back. For us, we had to cut all ties of everything and say, “Look, none of this stuff is working. We got to figure out something else. What is it?” and give us the ability to reset and start over.
I remember about that time, in the middle of this whole thing, Tony Robbins had put out a video about New Year’s time. In the video, he got up there and said, “Hey, it’s the new year.” It was him and his wife Sage.
He said, “It’s a new year. We can change any time of the year that we want but the new year always gives us a new outlook and the ability to think and to do things like that.” He says, “You know, I basically want to give you guys permission to change.” He said, “If you’re in a relationship you don’t like, change it. If you’re in a business you don’t like, change it. If you’re struggling with whatever, not happy with your physical appearance, change it.”
I remember sitting there thinking, “You know, he’s right. I can just change it. I’m so stuck on what we were doing, the model tied to this thing that I didn’t think about the fact that I could just change it.” That’s what’s so cool about what we do.
I’m guessing that if you’re listening to this, you’re an entrepreneur. You create your own destiny. If that’s you, then understand that you are an entrepreneur. You create your own destiny. You can create, build, become, and be whoever you want.
Use this as an opportunity first off to hopefully give you a glimmer of hope, and second off, give you the ability to sit back and look at what’s happening around you. If you need to and you want to, then just make those changes.
I’ll give you permission. Just like Tony gave me permission, I’m going to give you permission. I promise you guys that the light is there. It’s not far off. You got to stay the course, keep on working. Work through it and focus on serving other people.
If you do that, you’ll get to where you need to be. That’s it. That’s a wrap for today. I hope that it will help some of you guys. I’m excited to be in the new office. My future podcasts will be coming from the new office which is exciting.
We’re about to launch the new FunnelHacker podcast which is cool. I got the first episodes in the can. I think we’re going to be launching that probably early next week is the goal. So you guys will see that as well coming out. I’m sure you’ll see videos and stuff from the new office and everything as well.
It’s exciting. It’s fun. I appreciate you guys listening to my random thoughts for the day. I hope that it’s been a value to you. I appreciate you guys as listeners and subscribers. I hope you got the Dot Com Secrets book. I’m excited for you guys to get it. I’m excited to share that with you guys as well.
That’s it. I will talk to you guys soon. I’ll see you in the new office.