A powerful lesson I learned from one of my mentors…
On this episode Russell talks about some last minute preparations for the Funnel Hacking Live event. He also shares what you can learn from a Rubber band.
Here are some cool things to listen for in today’s episode:
Listen below to find out why you should be more like a rubber band.
---Transcript---
Hey, everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and welcome to Marketing in Your Car.
Hey, everyone. I always try to figure out a different way to make that sound different every time I say “Marketing in your car”, but it probably comes out the same to you guys. But in my mind, every time it’s a little bit different. A little more energy, a little different type of energy. Today, my energy is excitement and nerves and all these crazy things, because right now we are preparing for our first annual Funnel Hacking event.
And it’s really amazing, like, when we first started putting this event together, I was scared because, like, I hadn’t done events for a long time. And when I was doing them, back in the past, it’s always stressful. We would get, like, 200 people to sign up for it and then only 100 people would show up, and all sorts of stuff.
And you never know, and there’s all these unknowns. And so when we were first doing this, we were like, well, how many people can we get? We get 100, we get 500, we get 1000. We were trying to figure out. So we set a hard limit at 500 and I was like, that’s going to be really hard for us to get, but that will be kind of our goal. And so, we get the room size booked and everything, and then we went and started promoting it.
And we didn’t even promote it that hard, we ended up selling 600 tickets. Which screwed up everything, because it turns out, the Fire Marshal at a hotel won’t allow you to have more seats, they don’t care how many people you’ve sold to. Which is insane. So, we had to go and change the room size and get approval from the fire marshal and like, all these, just, you know — but, good problems to have, right?
Definitely better than the other side around, we’re like, okay, we’ve got a room that holds 500 people, how do we shrink it down to 50, right? So, it’s a good problem to have, it’s just one of those things. That’s happening, and then I’m trying to just make this an amazing event. Like, the people that signed up, it’s crazy. Like, I can’t believe how many of my peers and friends, all signed up. So we’re trying to make this just an amazing experience, and just have awesome content and videos, and just a cool environment.
And we’re giving away a Ferrari, and we’re launching our dream car contest, and all these things. And then I’m making, like, really cool handouts and order forms for the few couple of things we are selling. And just trying to make it like a class act event. And, man, I can’t tell you, I’ve been doing smaller events for a long time, and I’m comfortable with those.
But this one I’m really nervous about. So, anyway, yesterday for us was Memorial Day. Depending on where you are in the world, or when you’re listening to this. So went in yesterday in the office. I wanted to play with the kids, but I couldn’t because I’m just, yeah, I had to get stuff done. So I actually wrote four presentations. I think I’m presenting seven different things at the event.
So, I wrote four presentations yesterday, I had already done two before. And I’ve got one more to do today. But this morning I had Aidan — my little four-year old had his little gym graduation. So I went and did that this morning, which was super fun. And just having, you know, just all these fun things happening. It’s almost time for school graduation, we’re finishing kids’ projects, like, it’s so much chaos right now.
Note to self, don’t ever do an event at the end of May, again, because that’s when everything else on Earth in kids’ lives are happening too. But anyway, it’s exciting. So, now, I’m heading to the office, and I’ve got one last presentation to create. In this one I’m going to be teaching people how to become seven figures, excuse me, six figures a year Funnel Consultants, which is going to be exciting.
And then, at the end of it, we are going to offer our Funnel Certification Program. Which is a really neat program, I’m excited for it, I think it’s going to change some people’s lives. And so, I’m fired up. So that’s what I’ve got going on today. And it’s just, it’s just fun and so, for you guys listening, I’m trying to think what value I can provide for you guys today.
It’s always kind of my thought process when I’m driving, like, what cool can I say or can I share that will hopefully help everyone in their business. And I think for today, a lot of it is just like, stepping outside of your comfort zone. You know, like, I do a lot of stuff and I need people looking at me, man you’re stepping outside your comfort zone, but I really have been.
Like, I’m pretty comfortable with all the insane things I’ve been doing, but this was one, like, I feel nervous in my stomach right now, the event is not for two days. And it’s exciting and it’s nervous and it’s good. It’s a good thing to have, and I think that — I had a mentor, back when I was about 19 or 20 years old. And I remember he was doing this presentation, talking about us and how we needed to grow.
And he did this thing where he held up a rubber band, and he talked about it. He said, “Look, this rubber band, like, by itself, it’s just kind of useless, like, it’s just this floppy little thing that doesn’t do anything.” And he says, “The only way that this rubber band becomes valuable is if it gets stretched. Because then it gets stretched, now it can bind things together and hold things, and it can actually do stuff.
“But it has to be stretched to be able to do it.” But he said, “But if you’re not careful and you stretch it too much, it will snap and it will break. And then it becomes useless again.” But he said that, “For this rubber band to be useful at all, in any capacity, it has to be stretched.” And I started thinking about with what we’re doing, you know, with this event. Like, me and my entire team and everyone who is putting this together, I feel like we’re being stretched.
And a couple of times I felt like we were stretched to the point where we’re snapping, but then, for me, I had to come back. And my wife today was like, “So, you’re nervous, you’re freaking out, what’s happening?” And I was like, you know, I’m not, and I think it’s because, like, it’s okay. You know, like, if everything, if nobody shows up at the event, or if the event flops, or people are like, “Man, Russell, you were really boring on stage,” or whatever.
Who knows, like, all the irrational fears going through my head right now, like, worst case scenario, next week we’ll be back here in Boise, hanging out, having fun, and that was kind of comforting for me. It gave me the ability to kind of relax and just kind of take a little bit of pressure and tension off of the situation, to keep it from snapping.
And so, I hope that that gives you something that can help you today, when you start thinking about that with yourself. That understanding that for you to be useful in any capacity, you’ve got to be stretched, you’ve got to keep stretching yourself and stretching yourself. And if you don’t, you’re just going to be a useless rubber band that just sits there, right?
But also, knowing on the other side that if you stretch yourself too much, you are going to snap, and so, kind of finding that balance and being okay with whatever happens. And if, you know, again, if I show up and I’m the only dude in the room, you know what, my whole team will be there, we’ll have fun, we’ll go, I don’t know, go just have some fun in Vegas, and it will be alright.
But best case scenario, we can do this amazing thing and change some people’s lives and that’s really the end goal. And I was hearing Sean Stephenson, he’s a little tiny dude, motivational speaker. And just really just an impressive individual. He was speaking and I was listening to, like, his public speaking training. He said, “If you’re nervous for, to speak,” he said, “It’s a selfish thing, because you’re worried about how other people think about you,” and things like that.
He says, “When you change it to the point where you’re concerned about them and serving and giving, it takes that away from you, the nerves,” and that, he said, you shouldn’t be nervous. And I’ve been thinking about that. You know, like, part of me is still nervous, I wish I could say I wasn’t. But I’m still, I’m nervous. But I thought it was interesting — I think a cop just saw me. Crap. Yeah, the cop, there’s a motorcycle cop coming in my direction, totally was looking at me while I was talking on the phone with you guys.
But he is, I don’t think he’s flipping around. And if so, I’m about to turn into my office, little driveway thing, and he can’t catch me anyway. Anyway, sorry, back to my train of thought. Where was I? Yeah, so, for me, like, again, I still have nerves, I’m still, you know, it’s the kind of thing, like, I can’t wait to get to the point, like Sean talked about, where it’s just, you’ve got, you know, you’re so focused on the serving part of it that you don’t get nervous.
But I’m not there yet. But more so, I think that, as I keep preparing these things, every time I get nervous I’m like, I’m giving my all, like, if they don’t get value from this, then, you know, then that’s kind of on them, I guess? And as long as I do my best to try to serve and change and help people, that’s really the key. So, anyway, with that said, I’m at the office.
I’m going to go try to finalize and craft this last presentation, with the goal of helping a lot of people to change their lives and be able to take whatever it is they’re doing in whatever capacity, and become Funnel Consultants. That’s kind of the last presentation, and I think it’s going to open up a whole new world for people. And I’m excited to hopefully help facilitate that, and give people the ability they need to reach whatever goals and dreams they have with ClickFunnels and with the certification program.
So, be awesome. I appreciate you guys. If you’re in Vegas, I will see you soon. If you’re not coming to Vegas, hopefully you’ll come to the next one and we will see you at that. So thanks, you guys. I appreciate you and we’ll talk soon.