No one’s ever progressed by watching four hours of football…
On this episode Russell talks about turning off the football game and getting back to work because people are wasting their lives away watching sports.
Here are 3 interesting (but possibly offensive) things to listen for in today’s episode:
So listen below to hear how Russell is going to piss off all the people who love sports.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing in Your Car. Hey everyone, I hope you’re having a good day today. It’s freezing in Boise, I don’t know what it is but I keep thinking it’s going to be summer, and then no. And the way our new house is built, I don’t know if I told you this, It’s one of the pains of our house. So, it’s a little bit bigger of a house and there’s four different heating zones. And my bedroom is the last one, and also the heating system and the water system are tied together. So what happens is, because we’re the last room, we have those cool nest controller things, so we have the temperature set in our room to 71 which is perfect normally. But when it gets cold it’ll show 71 is where it’s trying to get to but it’s only actually 67. And for some reason, if it gets to freezing or below, I’m just pretty much screwed. That part of my house is freezing. At night we’re freezing cold. We have all these space heaters, and we’re trying to warm it up and everything, but it can’t get warm. We’ve had 5 guys come, so that’s part of the issue. But that’s okay cause we can bundle up in blankies and stuff to keep warm. The other part though, and we’ve learned this, if I look at the temperature in my room on my nest, let’s say it’s 71, but it’s actually under 71, that means it’s not able to get the heat it needs to warm my room, which is also tied to the hot water heater, which means my shower cannot make a warm shower. If the gauge on my room is 70 or 71 right now, I’m going to have a warm shower, but if it’s not I’m going to have a freezing cold shower. For the last 3 days it’s been below. Any other showers in our house are fine, so I have to go shower in the kids’ rooms. But my own shower won’t and that’s kind of weird. So that’s where we’re at.
I wanted to talk today about something that I’m probably going to offend somebody. And if so, I really apologize. I don’t really apologize; I think it needs to be said. So this is my thought. I was asking someone the other day, they were trying to figure out what to build, their passions and stuff. I was like, “there’s got to be something you are crazy passionate about. Where you would do it for free and you could inspire others. All of your free time you’re focusing there and you’re learning about it and reading and watching.” And maybe I’m just the weird one but I assumed everyone was passionate about something. I assumed there’s things you follow that you’re obsessed with. For me, obviously marketing, I’m obsessed with it. I read every blog post, listen to every podcast, reading insane amounts of books and courses. I’m just obsessed with that concept, but that’s not the only concept. There’s a lot of other stuff. For a while it was NLP that became a passion. I was studying, I was learning, I was reading books and courses and cds. It was consuming, immersion of NLP. I had a time I was selling. How do we sell, trial closes, and tonality, and all that’s from when I became obsessed with the selling part for a while. Right now, I think my passion is bio-hacking. What are all the weird crazy cool things I can do to get more out of my body. More energy, more focus, more weight loss, more happiness. Maybe I’m just insane, because of this bio-hacking phase; we’re in the process about to begin to build out this huge bio-hacking room in our house. It’s going to be insane. I’m hoping I finish it before I’m out of my bio-hacking phase. But as of right now, I’m in it. I’m neck deep and I’m obsessed and it’s so much fun and exciting. Every day there’s a fun new thing. I’m reading the blogs and the podcasts. I’m starting a whole cool company based around it. Just a bunch of crazy, cool things. So that’s kind of what’s happening.
I love it and I have so much fun with it and I assume everyone’s got something like that. So I ask this guy, “What are the things you are passionate about?” And he really struggled trying to find it. Finally he came back, “You know what I’m really passionate about? Sports, I love watching football.” I was like, “Oh man,” I wanted to ask, “How many hours a day do you watch football, how many hours a week do you watch football?” I don’t even know where to go with this. Maybe it’s just because I’m not the kind of guy that likes to watch sports. I love being entertained, I love going to a two hour movie and watching and getting entertained and then coming back to the real world and doing stuff again. But it feels like with sports, especially football. It’s four hours and you watch other people live their dreams and you sit there and you don’t. And you talk about things that don’t matter. And again, some people sports is their thing and it matters, I get that. I’m a wrestler, I get passionate, I watch other people. I get that. But, I think a huge majority of people are just wasting their life away watching sports. Watching other people achieve their goals, and their dreams and things like that. Again, an average football game is four hours, and how many football games do you watch a week or weekend?
My brother, I love him to death, but he watches football all of the time. We were at his house, and he’s a lot younger than me, we were talking and he’s talking about all these super bowls that happened before he was born, that he went back and watched the videos of them. Dude, you watch videos from people who are from before you…You wasted four hours of time watching something that you could have just seen the score. You knew the outcome and you watched four hours of this thing. And it was just like,” Ahhh”. I see people watching golf, and baseball and it just doesn’t make sense to me. You know, it’s been interesting. I love going to sporting things. I went to the wrestling match of the kids the other day. I like going to baseball games and football games. For me, it’s a lot less of going to watch the sport. And the sport part is fun, I get that, but it’s the people, the atmosphere. I enjoy that part of it. But sitting down in front of the TV and pushing play while your wife and kids do other things and you’re just zoned out. It just makes me sick thinking about how many hours are wasted. They could be doing so many more productive things. Helping to enhance you and your life and family and people around you, people you could serve. If you took that four hours a week, assuming you’re watching one game and not twelve. The four hours you spend watching a game and use it to read a book or to read blog posts, for crying out loud, just something. You can develop skills that can actually help other people and change the world in your little way. That’s kind of my thought. I just feel like, there’s nothing inherently bad with sitting there watching a football game. What does Garrett White say, “You’re sedating yourself, so you don’t have to deal with all the rest of the things.” I’ve been to people’s houses where I go over there and their watching football and their wife and kids are in the other room, and they’re missing it!
So if you’re number one passion or hobby or talent is watching sports, I recommend deleting ESPN or ESPN2, or ESPN the Ocho, or whatever. Whatever you’re watching, turn it off. It’s not that important. Have them text you the highlights of the game. Watch the news, the recap for three minutes. They show you all the important plays that happened and you don’t have to waste so much of your time, energy and talents on that.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I think I’m just very guarded of my time, every waking minute. Because I know that there’s so much to do, so much that I want to become, and I feel like, four hours, or three hours or one hour, of whatever sport you’re in, that’s a big sacrifice. If you’re billing your time that four hour period of time, it’s not making at least 5 grand an hour, if you’re not making 20 grand from there, there are way better ways to spend that time. So I encourage you guys to turn off the TV and stop watching sports. Watch the highlights, I’ll allow you to do that because I even like the highlights, even sports I don’t like, it’s still fun. Like golf, I will never watch golf or baseball or pretty much any sport to be honest, but I love watching the highlights, because you get to see the one cool thing that happened in 4 hours. I get that, so I give you permission to watch the highlights, but turn the darn TV off, pay attention to your wife, your spouse, and it’s time to cultivate a hobby or talent that isn’t involved watching other people succeed. It’s around you helping and serving and changing somebody’s life. Think about what aspect of your life you are passionate about. Is it financial, is it health, is it business, is it recreational, is home building, is it gardening? I don’t care what it is, pick something. Start doing that, because first off, when you start doing it, you’re going to become a better person. I don’t know anyone who becomes a better person watching four hours of football. It doesn’t happen. Maybe you know players names better or you can guess the scores or you can cheer for people, but it doesn’t make you a better person at all. I almost think, it’s the second you turn the TV on, your progress in life starts moving backwards. I feel like we’re always either moving forward or backwards. The second you push play on ESPN you start moving backwards, because you’re no longer contributing, you’re just being entertained. It’s like a movie you guys, that’s it. So there you go. I’m sure I pissed off a lot of people who love sports, but I care more about you and about what you can become and who you can serve. So turn off the TVs, let’s find a passion, find a hobby. Something that, first off, is going to better your own life, and second off, you can use that to better other people’s lives. That’s the secret spot where you’re going to find a business guys. If you’re not passionate about something yet, turn off the TV and go to Barnes and Noble. Lock yourself in there and walk around and read every book until….read the first chapter of a different book in every single section, and the book you’re not able to put down, that’s the one. Go buy it and go start consuming it and go buy all the other books around that topic.
That’s how you should begin your journey. Turn off the TV, go get a book and that’s it for today. I’m going to go in there and get back to work on writing a book. Book number two, first draft is done and we’re working on getting it all done. Hopefully have the first printed draft live at the funnel hacking event. So I’m excited. Appreciate you all, have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon.