How to stay relevant in your market consistently year-in and year-out.
On this episode Russell talks about Shania Twain and what she taught him about remaining relevant. He shares some things that he has been doing to stay relevant in the business.
Here are a few cool things you will hear in today’s episode:
So listen below to hear how Russell keeps his name fresh on people’s minds and how that can help you within your own business.
---Transcript---
Hey, this is Russell Brunson I want to welcome you to today's marketing in your car.
Hey guys and gals and everybody out there driving either to or from work, or hanging out in your cubicle, or at home, or in bed, or wherever you are hanging out with me tonight, or today. I appreciate you guys, I'm heading home from the office right now and had a long day. We have a thing called “Decade In A Day” we do for all of our inner circle members where they come in and we get to do a full day consult. Well, an hour long consult with them but with eight people throughout the day, so it's eight hours.
I'm a little bit fried, and I'm heading home right now to go to the Boise state game. We've got a cute little handicap kid we're taking with us, so we've got to get there early to get him into the stadium and it's a lot of work, but it's going to be a lot of fun. Really excited for that, hopefully my energy level will stay up because I am beat right now.
I wanted to talk to you guys about something interesting I learned from Shania Twain. Now, I need to admit first off I'm a huge Shania Twain fan, had a crush on her since I was eighteen years old. I was actually at my senior year in high school, we went to a wrestling tournament and the wrestling tournament was out in Florida, and our parents didn't come with us, it was a whole bunch of wrestlers. I can’t believe our poor coaches took us on that. We went there, we're all in a hotel room, jammed with like twenty wrestlers in one hotel room. Anyway, MTV was cool back then, I don't think it is anymore, but it might be for young kids, but I don't think it's cool. Definitely back than it was still cool, and so every morning they'd turn it on and every morning this song came on from this beautiful girl, named Shania Twain. It was the song “Looks Like We Made It”.
I fell in love with Shania back then, and it's been awesome ever since. Anyway, fast forward and it was ... it was interesting, went to her concert and it was fun, we had a great time. What was weird to me is like this was the first time I had ever seen her live in person, and my distinct thought in my head was like “Hey, it looks like Shania Twains mom!”, that's what it felt like.
I'm like, oh, I'm not eighteen years old anymore, she's no longer thirty years old or whatever she was back then. We're all getting older, it's different, and I think that they were saying it's Shanias last tour ever and all of this stuff we were reading online. Even though the first time I had heard about her was 1998, I guess she had been touring and doing stuff since 1992.
So, from 1992 until today, which is, I don't even know how many years that is, twenty years? That's a long time right? A long, long time. It's interesting that people hear Shania Twain’s coming to town and they still pack the house with tons of people, it was really really cool. Maybe start thinking about the question that I think is important for me, specifically, and for you and for everyone who is trying to sell stuff, and the question is, “How do we remain relevant?”
It's interesting, I got started in this business twelve years ago, and in that time I could list off pages and pages of people who came in who were the hot stuff in the couple different markets that I have been in. They come in with a lot of energy, a lot of fanfare, and they come in and it's like “wow, these guys are amazing”. Within a year, year and a half, two years, these guys disappear and they're no longer relevant.
Okay, you see it with celebrities all the time as well. I remember I had a guy write a sales letter for me a couple years ago, and one of the case studies that he talks about, and we had it hand sketched and it was like, “this is hotter than the tickets to a Justin Bieber concert” or something. We never launched that sales video and in the future I was always going to.
Now look at like, Justin Biebers whole career is dead and I'm like crap, I can never use that sales video because that's no longer relevant, he's no longer relevant, the whole concept. If I do ever launch that sales video I've got to re-sketch it with someone else who is cool, which I thought was kind of funny. I should just post the hand sketch out of this Justin Bieber because it’s funny ... anyway, that's a good question… How do you stay relevant?
I've been grateful that in the twelve years I've been in this business, one that you guys would be familiar with, I've been in a lot of businesses. One that my face is on the front of it, how do you stay relevant? It's scary because I've gone through session or seasons, whatever you want to call them in my life, in my career, where I wasn't anymore.
I felt that, one minute you're the hottest thing on earth, the next minute nobody cares. You work really hard and all of a sudden you become relevant again, then it goes away and it's like man, how do you do that, how do you stay that way? It's funny, I had a talk, call, whatever you want to call it. Mike Filsaime, one of my closest marketing buddies, one of the first guys I met when I got online, he came to Boise a couple years ago and spent a couple days here just talking about business and stuff. I asked him, he was doing the marketers cruise every year, and I was like, "Why do you still do that man? You don't make any money, it's a week away of your life."
He said, "The real reason I do it, is to stay relevant. That's what keeps me in the mind of my customers, my JV partners, my prospects all the time." He's like, "If I stop doing that there's a chance that I would slip and not be relevant anymore."
That's the first time I had ever thought about it, like “Wow that's interesting. How do you stay relevant?” That's the question I don't know if I can answer today on this podcast, but I might give you some hints or some ideas of things I've thought through, things that I think have helped me in the times that I've been able to stay relevant. I hope I can continue to stay relevant for a long time. Until I'm ready to disappear into the night, which is going to happen you guys, mark my words. One day Russell will disappear and, I'll keep doing the marketing in your car because I love you, but the rest of the world will not know I exist.
A couple things, first off I think a big part of it is you've got to be a ferocious learner. Not only does whatever market you're in change a lot, even if things don't change a lot in your market which is true with some things... People that are in that market, their cycle, the things that are happening, things that are hot, things that are exciting. If you ... I remember in the internet marketing space for a long time, membership sites was the thing, it was the hot topic. I luckily came in and rode that wave, I came out with a concept called micro-continuity about that time, and it blew up and made insane amounts of money. I was super relevant than, but then the buzz and excitement of membership sites went away.
I had to transition away from micro-continuity, that product if I launched it today would not do a fraction of what it did when we launched it. I hit it at a time it was hot. One of my very first products I had success with was a public domain thing. For whatever reason public domain, one or two years into my career became this hot topic and everyone was talking about it. Yanik Silver is launching products ... all of these other things were happening; I was like, "Huh."
All these people talking about public domain, I'm going to make a public domain membership site. It came out and it just the right timing and it worked. It was relevant, it kept me focused. I think that if I was in a veracious, I don't know how to say that word ... learning all the time and seeing what the trends are, and learning and trying to be the top of my game so that whatever was hot and relevant, that I was in that conversation. I understood it, I could keep up with it, and I could help expand those conversations and take the concept of like membership sites or recurring, and how could I make this better? What can I do, how can I expand that thought or that concept?
I think that's one really big thing. I think that ... that kind of leads to another thing is like, being prolific. Again, how do you teach being prolific right? It's hard, it's not something that you can just teach I don't think. It's understanding, I have this thing called the prolific index, some of you guys may have seen it. In the middle it's like the sane zone, this is like when you go to high school and they teach you about the four food groups, like that's in the middle.
Then on both ends, I call it the crazy zone. The crazy zone is like where people are crazy, like, "Hey liposuction, you should just chop off your fat and you'll lose weight that way," right? Somewhere between the crazy and the boring mid zone, is the prolific zone. This is where like, for me I think I talk about guys like Dave Asprey, I hung out with last week. Putting butter in your coffee to lose weight, that's the prolific zone. It's not mainstream where no one's going to give you money, it's not crazy where people are going to think you're insane, but in between there.
That's the sweet spot, that's where you've got to be living, that's where you've got to be thinking. I have friends that are amazing at helping people lose weight, but they are so mainstream that it's hard for them to get a message out because their message is the same as everybody else's message. If you want your message to grow and to expand and to be shared and to go viral, whatever you want to call that, it's gotta fall in between there, it cannot be in the boring zone or the crazy zone. It's got to be in the prolific.
Even if you don't believe in the crazier part of the things, you've got to find the things you do and you've got to tell stories, and create things so that becomes exciting. That's the key, that's a big key to it. The next thing I think is ... I don't know, there are so many things. I think it's being relevant not just to customers, but to partners. How do you serve people that potentially extend your message?
I've spent a lot of time, especially over the last twelve months trying to put a lot of time and energy into building relationships with other people who I feel are very relevant, so that I can ride on their coat tails or I can leverage some of those things as well. Learning how to speak, learning how to sell, learning how to be good on camera so that people are excited. This periscope thing for me has been evolving a lot lately, it's been interesting to me.
I love my podcasts, I love this, but it's hard for me to grow this audience. It grows organically, and luckily there's a lot of word of mouth from you guys, who I appreciate it. Sharing this with other people, in fact, if you like this episode, share it, please. It's hard for me to inherently promote, there's not good tools to build your podcast right? There are things you can do but it's not as easy, where as with periscope I've got a lot more things, a lot more tools to use to grow that following.
Its growing, not super fast but right now we're average about three or four hundred people are watching my webinar, or watching my periscopes when they're live, which has been awesome. Then another five or six hundred, so almost a thousand people are watching each one which is cool, but then evolving and I'm figuring ... these first ones are fifteen to twenty minutes long, they're good but I was losing people really fast.
I did it a couple days ago, I called it a marketing quickie and I shared it, and it was awesome. Engagement, sharing, everything was way better. Now, when getting my platform now, so I've done three in a row, it's called marketing quickies, like quick five minute long periscopes.
They're fast, they're awesome, and I'm taking that and I can push it. It's growing, and I think that finding something like that and then being very consistent is key as well.
Anyway, there's a lot of little things. I don't know if I know the answer, but what wanted to kind of start the conversation and get you guys thinking and running that through your heads. I think that's important, because just because you're making money today, you might not be making money tomorrow. Be grateful for what you have right now, be grateful for whatever platform you have, because it can go away.
I've seen mine go up and down throughout the years, and I'm very aware of that, and I'm very grateful for what I do have, and I want to stress for you guys that you understand that, and be grateful for it. Do things to stay relevant, that's a big key. Again, I have friends who thought they would be forever, and now I watch them and most of them ... they're not doing what they were doing five, ten years ago, and that's a big deal. Hope that helps, hope that helps at least get your thoughts in that direction, and yeah. I'm tried, I'm beat up, I'm going to go home, go to the football game and have some fun.
Thanks you guys, I appreciate you, and I'll talk to you soon.