Lessons from a whirlwind weekend that started with a potato gun exploding in my face.
On this episode Russell talks about a whirlwind weekend he had which involved a carnival, a camping trip, and flying to and speaking in 2 different cities.
Here are some of the interesting things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen below to find out how Russell nearly blew himself up and then went on to speak at 2 events just a few hours later.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing in Your Car.
Hey everyone, this is Russell. I’m doing this Marketing in Your Car for a couple reasons. One of them is so I don’t fall asleep while I’m driving because I don’t want to die and I really need you guys to help me out, so that’s one part of it. It’s super late. I just landed on a plane.
The last 48 hours of my life have been completely insane. I just want to tell you about it because I think it’s just funny and I thought you guys would enjoy it because you guys are going to hear all my strange things that happen to me. It started with a potato gun blowing up in my face and ended with me driving home from the airport.
This is my life for the last 48 hours. I don’t do a lot of public speaking anymore, going traveling and stuff like that because it’s hard with my wife and kids, and business and everything else but for some reason, I got booked to do two things this weekend. One was to speak at Ray Hick, just a really cool guy, really someone I respect a lot in this industry.
He was doing his high end mastermind for his $25,000 clients in Park City, Utah and he asked if I could come in and speak for awhile. Again, Ray is someone I really look up to so I was like, “Yes, I will definitely come up and do that.”
Then Steve Olsher did an event called Internet Prophets Live and asked if I could come speak at that one too. I said yes. I had those two events happening this weekend. I booked them, had flights and everything planned. I was going to go out there and do it.
Then my wife tells me about a week ago, “Hey, don’t forget that on Thursday,” this Thursday or whatever, “we’ve got a carnival for the kids and then Friday is our church camping trip.” It’s called fathers and sons. We take our boys out camping.
I was like, “Oh no, I have those plus I’m supposed to speak at Ray’s event and Steve’s event the same weekend.” It was the middle of when I was supposed to be speaking, so I had to call those guys up and say, “I’m so sorry, I can’t come the day I’m supposed to be coming. Can I shift the days, move things around?”
Anyway, somehow luckily because there’s not a lot of flights coming out of Boise -- Boise is a little airport -- somehow luckily for me, we lined it up where I could basically go Thursday to the kids’ carnival, Friday, work for two hours in the morning and then pick up the kids and go camping that night, camp all night Friday night.
Then wake up in the morning, race home, drop the kids off, and then race to the airport, fly from Boise up to Salt Lake, and then Uber drive from Salt Lake to Park City, speak there, and then fall asleep that night, wake up at six in the morning, drive from Park City back to Salt Lake, fly from there to LA.
Then speak at his event, fly home, and land in Boise. That’s what I just did. I just landed in Boise after that whirlwind of traveling, speaking, traveling, speaking that was wrapped at the end of a camping trip. It turned out really well. We had a fun time.
But the camping trip is where the fun began so let me start there. I was camping with the kids. You know, you guys who know, who follow my business and all that, I started this whole business with potato guns. That was the first thing.
I got a ton of potato guns. I had 10 or so of them in my garage. We’re packing up for the camping trip. It’s funny, because we’re camping for one night and we literally had my wife’s extended cab Denali, huge car, completely filled to the brim with coolers, sleeping bags, tents, and pads, and potato guns -- just crazy.
I’m like, “How in the world? This is one night’s sleep. How did people back in the day go camping?” Nowadays, you’re basically bringing your whole hotel with you. It’s crazy. We had it in there and had the potato guns.
So we get there. We were the first ones there because I took the kids out of school early. I’m like, “You know, if I’m going to go, let’s make it fun,” so I pulled the kids out of school, went to lunch and then drove down there and got a campsite, just goofing off.
Then we broke out the potato guns and started shooting these potato guns which is like one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy it. So we’re shooting potato guns, having fun. Then one of the potato guns misfires. The potato doesn’t come out of it.
I know not to look at the end of the barrel because that’s safety rule number 101 in my how to make potato gun course. I’m the potato gun guy. I know the rules. We wrote the rules, so I don’t look in the end, but I go back to the chamber which I had just sprayed for a minute, a whole bunch of hairspray and I capped it off.
I opened up the back of it and all the hairspray starts coming out of it. Then I flip the back side open and look in there. I see potato jammed in there. I’m trying to figure out, “Why in the world didn’t it shoot? The fuel is coming out. I don’t see any gaps around the potato. Why did it not work?”
So I flick the igniter just to see - yes, stupid Russell. I flicked the igniter to see why in the world it doesn’t work, and this huge fireball goes boom, and comes out the backside right into my face. My eyelashes curled in half. You know what happens if you light your hair on fire.
They curled in half. Then my eyebrows completely got singed off. Then the whole front of my bangs just shrunk up, you know how hair when it gets on fire goes, all the front of my hair. First, I’m trying to figure out, “Am I dead? What just happened? My whole face just caught on fire. Okay, I survived.”
Then I started feeling my eyebrows. “These feel all crunchy. Something weird is happening.” I feel my crunchy eyebrows and my hair. Anyway, needless to say, my face had caught on fire. We kept shooting potato guns until both of them got jammed and ruined.
Then we just packed up and went back to camp. That night, we were making s’mores. By the way, if you make s’mores, the best way to do them is instead of using chocolate, you use Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Oh, if you try that, it will change your s’more experience.
I don’t even like s’mores anymore unless they have Reese’s. Now it’s amazing. We had tons of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and we had the whole thing, making s’mores and went camping. We went to bed that night in the tent with the kids, super fun, great time.
Next morning, wake up and pack up the whole thing, get in the car, and I look in the mirror and I couldn’t even believe how horrible I looked. I’m like, “I’m supposed to be speaking at Ray’s $25,000 mastermind group in four hours.”
We race home and I have 20 minutes when I get home to the time I have to leave to the airport in time. I’m in the bathroom with these little scissors, snipping off the singed hair off my eyebrows and eyelashes, and my bangs so that I don’t look like I have singed, curly hair. It took me 20 minutes to snip off all the tons of singes.
I still didn’t get it all out. My hair looks horrible right now still. I shower real quick. Then I don’t even have time to pack my bags. It’s basically one night, two cities. I just get my backpack, throw in my clothes and stuff, and jump in my car, race to the airport, and then fly.
I almost missed my flight. It was crazy. I got to the airport 30 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave. Luckily I didn’t have any check-on backs so I was able to get on. I flew to Salt Lake, took an Uber up to Park City which was awesome.
We go to Park City. I had a chance to meet with this group who was different than the group I normally hang out with. I’m an Internet nerd so I’m usually with Internet marketing nerds. This was a bunch of network marketers.
It was a small room, probably 30 people or so in a big suite overlooking all of Park City. It was amazing. As soon as I walked in the door, they were in the break. I walk in and Ray comes, “Hey, how’s it going?” and hands me a microphone.
I put it on and he’s like, “You’re up.” “Oh, what did you want me to talk about? You didn’t even ask me what to speak on.” He’s like, “Oh, just talk about this.” So I go out there for an hour and talk about some stuff.
It was really cool. I talked about everyone talks about their product or service, selling things like that. I just talked about that’s not what it’s about. People buy based on results. I asked what everyone was doing.
There was people in Beach Body, people in all these different network marketing programs. I told them, “The biggest, most powerful thing you guys can do is go and work for free for someone. Go get a result. Go and prove that what you have works. If you got a product, go and give it to other people. If you have a service, perform that service and just wow someone.”
I told the story about how when we re-launched our coaching program, I needed some good success stories. The first thing I did is I worked for free. I called up this guy named Drew Connolly, flew out to his office and worked for free for him, served him, and was able to help their company grow, and then from that, I was able to capture proof of video testimonial of that experience and then used that video testimonial to leverage and to grow our coaching program.
I showed them the right way to capture those and everything, and just said, “You know, whatever your product is, step one, go out and serve. Go and get some people results. After you get results, then you can capture those on film and record those on your iPhone or whatever it is to make a really good video. Now, that’s the leverage you need to do everything else.”
I talked about that. I talked about my Dream 100 strategy. I showed them how to do that. I showed them this concept of how to penetrate Dream 100 to dramatically increase your traffic and a bunch of cool things, stuff that if you’ve read the DotCom Secrets book, and in fact, there’s a bonus chapter if you upgraded and bought the audio book, there’s a bonus chapter called “The Dream 100” that I taught that whole concept with.
I showed that whole process which was cool. Then I got to go to an amazing restaurant and hang out with all these network marketing guys, and hear their stories. These are all of Ray’s top earners. There are guys making a million dollars in network marketing.
It was cool to see their process because these guys make their money not by selling products but by building teams of people and teaching these people how to build teams of people. It was cool to see how business works in that sphere among the elite people which was cool.
Then that night, I went to bed, woke up in the morning, again, six in the morning, Ubered back to Salt Lake, flew to Steve’s event. Steve’s event was interesting too because it wasn’t like a normal Internet marketing event where everyone gets up and teaches and sells, things like that but it was more they had what he called a 20/20/20 where they had 20 minutes of teaching, and then 20 minutes of actual workshop time where people had to go work, and then 20 minutes of Q&A.
I watched some of the other speakers do that. Then I was going to do that, and then I ended up last minute changing my process and just gave my Funnel Hackers presentation because I felt like that’s what that audience really needed. It was really cool.
I kind of did that. It was awesome. I didn’t get a sale. It wasn’t a selling event. I just gave the first basically hour long of my presentation. Afterwards, I had a lady come up in tears crying, talking about how it changed everything she’s doing. It was really rewarding for me.
It was fun. A ton of people had my book and I got to sign the book. It was really fun. After that was done, one of the attendees threw me in their car and drove me back to the airport, jumped in the plane, sat on the plane passed out, and then woke up right when I landed.
Now I’m here, hanging out with you guys. It was a crazy weekend, a ton of fun. I was able to accomplish a ton of stuff in a very short period of time and just grateful, really grateful for this opportunity that I have to be able to go and share what I’m passionate about.
I was thinking about both of these events, I didn’t get to sell anything at them. I just got to go and try to inspire people and to share my story and talk about for me, what my thing that I’m passionate about which is Click Funnels and just talk about how it’s affected me and changed my life, and changed other people’s lives.
It was so cool to see as I shared that with people, them have breakthroughs and get how this could help them as well. It was fun. It came back to what I talked about earlier where I had a chance this weekend to work for free.
I didn’t get paid. I paid my own way. I paid for my own flights, my own hotels. Not only did I not make any money, but it cost me money to do it but it was a chance for me to go out and work for free. I just want to encourage you guys to do that.
I know that we’re always there, building a business, trying to make money but there are times when you just got to give back and work for free. I looked at that lady who was in tears when she gave me a hug when I left. Who knows what that is going to do for her? I don’t know yet.
Because I was willing to go and work for free and try to share, and try to share my message and what I do, it affected her that way and a lot of other people. I think it’s a blessing that we all have, that it’s good for all of us every once in awhile to give back as much as you can and hopefully change someone’s life.
There you go. I’m almost home, feeling a little more energized than when I started talking so thank you guys for keeping me up, not letting me pass out and die behind the wheel. I’m also happy that I survived the potato gun incident. Hopefully by the Funnel Hacking event in two weeks, my eyelashes will have grown back.
If not, sorry about that for everybody who is going to be there. All right everybody, I appreciate you guys. I am going to sign off and go get some sleep, and will be back at it next week, having fun, inspiring, trying to spread the message, trying to get more people in the Click Funnels, trying to take over the Internet marketing scene with it.
One last thing, for those of you guys who are going to be at the Funnel Hacking event, I’m going to show you a blend of two worlds, of the network marketing world and the Internet marketing world. We’re going to take the best from network marketing and strategy that companies like Mary Kay use and ViSalus, and all the big network marketing companies use to inspire and motivate their customer base to spread their message, and we’re going to bring it to Click Funnels.
If we execute it correctly, every single one of you guys listening to this podcast right now could be driving a brand new Corvette or Tesla or Ferrari, or whatever car is your dream car, and I’ll be paying for it. It’s going to be sweet. I’ll fill you in with more details soon, but just to get you excited about what’s coming up.
I’m back home. Talk to you guys soon. Have an awesome night. If you shoot potato guns, make sure never to look at either end, not just the top end. Thanks guys.