Can you believe this happened on the drive over?
In this episode Russell talks about The Inner Circle and why he’s going to lock it down when it fills up. He also talks about why you should join the Inner Circle and help grow your own business.
Here are some cool things in today’s episode:
So listen below to hear why you should join Russell’s Inner Circle to learn valuable things to help grow your business.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to another episode of "Marketing In Your Car." Hey, everyone, I hope you guys are having an awesome day. I'm about to start a week that I am so excited for. This week is Inner Circle week. I'm actually driving to the hotel right now to come hang out with our top level clients and friends. I feel like they're more like a family now. That's what's happening and I'm so excited.
For those of you guys that are listening to this who are part of that group, I'm excited to see you. I feel bad, I just got a vox from Brent on our team. He's heading there to help with registration and hang out and everything. He got in a wreck on the way there. For all of you guys, this is a public service announcement from Russell. If you're listening to me right now and you're in a car, please be careful. I'm going to be careful, as well, because we don't want to get hit like Brent. Actually, he hit them. He saw something on the side of the road and looked at it like, "Oh, what is that," and then smacked into the dude in front of him. His airbags went off and everything. It was kind of serious. I'm hoping that while we're talking, because I'm behind him a little ways, that I'll drive by him and I'll actually see him and we can all honk and yell at him or something funny. Not that getting in a wreck is a funny thing, because it's not, but when it's your friend and he's not hurt, then it's hilarious. There you go.
I know that some of you guys saw some of the Inner Circle campaigns and people have been asking me like, "Did you fill it up? What happened," and all that kind of stuff. Kind of what happened is, as you know, in the past, we've had two coaching groups. We had Ignite, which it was $12,000 and then had Inner Circle that's 25 and they've both been amazing groups, but I decided this year that I just wanted to focus on the Inner Circle. We closed down Ignite, which is kind of scary, because that was probably 2 million dollars a year in revenue that we decided, "Oh, let's just turn it off. Let's turn it off and focus on these other guys."
Then we started thinking, "How many people can we run in our Inner Circle." I've been in Inner Circles where people have done it right and I've been in ones that people have done it wrong. I felt the right was is to have a group of about 33 people in a meeting, because in two days, you can have everyone present. It works really, really good. I've been in other groups that had 100 people in it and it just doesn't work well.
In fact, I'm in a group right now that has 100 and my first meetings next month and I'm curious to go and see how they facilitate it. I've yet to see it done well. I want to keep the group small enough that we can keep that same intimate atmosphere, but it'd be fun to have 100 people. I'm trying to figure out the math behind it. How do we do this so we can have 100 people in it? Basically it came down to having three groups. At a time, we had two groups and I'm like, "Hey, we're basically we're to fill one more group, so three groups of 33.3 people, so it equals 100 people, right." In December, we did the math and already two groups were full and the third group was starting to get full, so we sent an email basically saying, "Hey, Inner Circle's closing down. Ignite's already gone. If you want the last spots, they're going really, really fast." From that, I think somewhere between 12-15. I don't know. I'd have to look at the exact numbers, but people that joined in December, at 25 grand a piece, so that was awesome from a revenue standpoint, but more so from like, "We're adding more people to this family." It's exciting.
We have a few more spots. Our next meeting after this is in May, and we have our Funnel Hacking event before then and a bunch of other stuff, so they'll be sold out by May. My goal is to basically lock it down. We have really high renewal rates, people that were in it that come back each year. My goal is to hopefully not have to ever open it up again and let people just keep coming back. When spots do open up, we'll just let the waiting list know, "Hey, there's one new spot," or "three new spots," or whatever and keep it filled. Keeping 100 people and that's it and working really close with 100 entrepreneurs at a time and really trying to cultivate that and turn it more and more into a family. That's what's happening.
This is fun. This week, we basically have two groups happening. In May, we'll have three groups. That's what's going down in the Inner Circle. The way we facilitate ours, and everyone kind of does them different, but basically, over two days, everyone has a chance to get up and share for about 30 minutes, first off what's awesome in their business, because that's fun to always hear. The one big thing you got since the last meeting that's been crushing it for you. The second thing is asking, "I want some feedback from the group?" It's kind of like group consulting, where everyone in the group is a rock star. It's not just like, "Here's Russell's advice." It's like, "Here's this group of 30 other people that are amazing. Here's them sharing what they would do in that situation and getting their feedback and stuff like that." It's a really neat thing where you just get amazing feedback.
Afterwards, late nights, everyone's hanging out and you've got relationships that are built and from there it's really extending that relationship and extending everything and growing it for the next three or four months for the next meeting and stuff like that. It's exciting. I love it. That's what I'm heading to right now and having a chance to hang out with our Inner Circle family. If you're in it, I'm excited to see you. If you're not in it, you should just get in it. The spots are going to be gone and then they're going to be gone. If you go to RussellBrunson.com, you can get more info on it. My guess is, within the next month or so, there will no longer be spots in the Inner Circle. Hopefully, there never will be.
People keep asking me, "Russell, you shut down your Ignite coaching, so that's gone. Inner Circle's now locked out. What's your purpose and what are you doing now? What's you business like?" I keep looking at that, because ClickFunnels is where our focus is at. It's growing consistently and is doing well and I think it will continue to do that. Inner Circle's capped out, so that business is there. We'll keep creating front end products and bringing new people into ClickFunnels.
For me, it's really looking at now, "What are some strategic projects that we can partner on, that I can bring my magic tricks to and the other people can become runners and operators of these businesses." We kind of have three that I'm doing this with right now.
One is, you guys know the company Pruvit, which is the keytone drink that I'm obsessed with. I was able to come in and they gave me a percentage to do what I'm good at doing, my funnels and all that kind of stuff. I'm not involved in the day to days or anything like that. I'm involved in what I'm good at and I can just do that and nothing else.
Same thing with ... Some of you guys know Anthony? We're doing the same thing with Biohacking Secrets, where he's the owner, operator. I come in and get to do my things in exchange for a percentage.
I do another project like that with Christian who is the guy on our team who ran it. He's been running the Ignite program. He's got an amazing survival business he's building out and a similar concept. I'm not trying to get a lot of these businesses, because they take a lot of time and energy and effort and money, honestly.
Oh crap. There's a cop coming. Please say he's not coming after me. I will be late if I get pulled over right now. Cross out fingers that he passes me. I'm going to hold the phone down a little lower. I'll talk louder so hopefully you guys can hear me. I think he's pulling the dude over behind me. Sweet. We didn't get caught. Oh crap, he just passed that guy. Cross your fingers that it's not me, you guys. I'm really nervous. He's actually pulling up right beside me, but I think he's going to pass me. Can you guys hear him? He's passing me right now. Can you guys hear that? Sweet. It's not me. I'm officially safe.
All right. Now that I'm safe, we can get back on tangent. I don't even remember where we left off. That got me nervous, because the event starts in 25 minutes. If I get pulled over right now, I'd be late. That's a good sign. That actually happened to me one time. We were doing an event at our old office. I was on the freeway and I was already running late. I was speeding and I got pulled over, so I showed up to my own event 20 minutes late, which was really not a good thing, obviously.
I don't know where I left off, but I think I left off somewhere. What I'm thinking about doing, I don't know, but I think this would be cool, but I don't know how to do it the right way. If you guys have any ideas, let me know. I watch Shark Tank a lot and that's a cool premise, but you get to see them pitch a deal and then that's kind of it. Then you see The Profit, which is cool, because Marcus comes in and rebuilds the whole business and that's fun. I want to do a hybrid of that. How do we make something where it's online thing and people can come and say, "Hey Russell. Here's our business. We're going to be the owners, operators and runners, but we want you to come in and do your ..." The three or four things that Russell's actually good at it, I'm going to come and do in exchange for equity. It'd be fun to do something like that where people come and get to present it to me and then we get to pick which ones we want to work with. Over the year, capture the story of that and film it and make a mini online TV show, showing that process. How many of you guys would like that? How many of you guys think that'd be pretty dang cool.
That's what I'm kind of looking at the future. I was telling Jason O'Neil, whose one of our Inner Circle members who, either today or tomorrow, he’s going to pass a million dollars in sales, since he joined the Inner Circle. It's super exciting. I was telling him, "Getting $25,000 from you to sign up with really, really cool, but what would be cooler is if I got 20% of everything you did. That would have been way cooler if I would have structured it that way. We didn't." I'm trying to find the right projects and deals where we can do that. How do we do that, but then make it in a fun way where everyone else can see behind the scenes and watch? I like to show that stuff. I think there's value.
I'm thinking about that, so if any of you guys have an idea. Two things. First off, we need a cool name for it. Without a cool name, it's not worth doing, right? The name is 90% of it, so if there's a cool name, I'll probably do it. Then, we need a cool concept, because I don't it to be like Shark Tank. You come pitch to me. I don't want to be mean too, I don't want to be Marcus Lemonis. I want something cool where we figure out a cool blend of that.
We were thinking about doing something ahead of time, where people get to apply between now and the funnel hacking event and at the funnel hacking event, do a whole session where people get to present their business and show… let everyone will watch that process. I think that would be kind of fun, as well. I don't know. Who knows if that will happen before then, but I think that would be a cool concept.
That's some of the stuff that I'm thinking about. For you guys' business, I wonder what you guys are all thinking about. After you get the initial foundation built, where you've got a good offer and traffic and customers, it really comes down to, "How do you make exciting, fun, cool things that people want to participate in? How do you change this?"
Sorry. I just hit the traffic on the freeway. Crap. I bet you we're getting close to Brent's wreck, actually. I bet that's what the cop was going to. Great. I'm going to be stuck behind all these people, because of Brent. Brent's going to make me late to this event now. That's kind of my thoughts. I hope you guys are having fun with your business. If it's not fun, then why are we even doing this. The harder part is initially getting the offers and the structure and the funnels and the audience. After you have the audience, it can become really fun. How do we inspire people? How do we motivate them? How do we get them excited about our product, our service and what we're doing.
With that said, that's about it, you guys. We're not going to see Brent, because I'm stuck on the freeway. We're 20 minutes out and I'm not even moving right. Cross your fingers I make it to the Inner Circle on time. If not, it's all Brent's fault, not mine. Just kidding. I appreciate you guys. Have an amazing day. I'll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye.