How to know when to stop.
On today’s episode Russell explains why you need to be able to consistently and profitably generate customers, or you are in the wrong business.
Here are a few interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out how you can tell if your business will grow or deteriorate.
---Transcript---
Hey, hey this is Russell Brunson, it is Saturday? I don’t even know. I’ve been camping and now we’re flying to Kenya and we’re all over the place. And I’m driving my car and was just Voxing some people in the Inner Circle, catching up on stuff before I headed out. And I had a conversation with somebody that was probably not what they were hoping for, but it was I think what they need. I just wanted to share it here because I’m positive that they’re not the only person in need of this advice. Because it’s hard advice, so I just wanted to share it with you guys. A lot of you won’t be applicable, but some of you, it will be very, very applicable. So here we go. By the way, this is Marketing In Your Car.
So like I said, in the preview or the intro or whatever we call this thing nowadays. I’ve got some probably backwards advice that’s backwards from what you’re hoping. I’m walking in the office right now and the alarm is about to go off, unless someone forgot to set the alarm. Check it out, somebody’s about to be fired, the alarm was not set. We’re good to go, there’s no beeping.
So the person’s advice, they’ve been going through my stuff and they have been almost a year in the program and just not having the success that they wanted or desired. In fact, having almost no success and there’s a couple of reasons. I’ll kind of leave it, I won’t give you an opinion on all the reasons but I do want to talk about what my feedback was.
The first thing was that if the business you are in cannot consistently and profitably, and those are the key words, consistently and profitably generate customers, it’s not a good business to be in. And I don’t care how many times they say, “I’ve made money in the past. I’ve got a bunch of clients who love me.” Or whatever. If you can’t consistently and profitably generate new clients, the business is not a good business and if you’re not careful you’re going to get caught where this person got caught. Where they have a business now that doesn’t, that they can’t profit from. They’ve got customers and clients paying them some stuff, but it’s just kind of stagnant. There’s always this, I don’t even know what it’s called, there’s the law. It’s one of Einstein’s law of deterioration, where everything deteriorates. Like Clickfunnels, we’re pushing and pushing and it’s growing and growing, but if I stopped it would start deteriorating. It’s just the law of how the universe works. You get an apple and you set it out in the sun, what happens? It doesn’t bloom up and become bigger, it deteriorates and starts going down into this mush thing.
Businesses are the same way, everything deteriorates. So if you have a business that’s there and you’ve got some customers, it’s going to start deteriorating and getting smaller no matter what you do unless you can consistently and profitably bring customers in. So my first question for you is are you in a business where you can consistently and profitably generate customers? If not, you’re in a bad business. That’s number one. Number two is you’ve got to learn how to sell people stuff. That is the most important thing, I don’t care what business you are in. The only thing that really matters is selling stuff. That’s it. And it’s interesting how people will try everything else to avoid selling. They’ll try focusing on Facebook ads, and this and that and all sorts of stuff you don’t have to actually sell, selling is the only thing that matters.
If you’ve read the book, Ready Fire Aim, and if you haven’t, seriously I recommend this probably 100 times in this podcast, it’s amazing. The book by Michael Masterson is all about to take a business and go from 0 to a million, a million to 10, 10 to 50 and 50 and above. And the skills challenge is opportunities that happens at each level. But the first part, if you only read the first section of the book going from 1 to a million dollars, that’s the most valuable part of the whole book for most of the people listening onto this. And the whole thing talks about the entire goal going from 0 to a million dollars in sales, the only thing you are trying to do is figure out how to profitably sell the thing you’re selling. That’s it. That’s the most important thing you can be focusing on your business. It’s not how to scale, the customer support, or all these things we get involved with. Or getting my office and my business cards and I need a sweet website, and all this crap that us as entrepreneurs think is important, because it’s not. The only thing that matters is how can I profitably sell my product? What do my customers actually want? That’s the whole section of that book is about is how to do that. Because as soon as you figure that out, that’s the role of the entrepreneur, that’s not something you can ask for or hire away, or set up a team around. All that crap. That is your role as the entrepreneur, you have to figure out, you have to cut your teeth and go out and sell something. Because until you sell something nothing happens. That’s your job, to go out there and sell and figure out how in the world, first off, how do I pitch this thing that I created to get people to get excited enough to give me money for. That’s what you gotta figure out, that’s the most important thing that you’re doing here in that business, when you’re going from 0 to a million dollars.
And after you mastered that and figured out, okay, boom. Like for Clickfunnels, we figured out the way to sell Clickfunnels is through webinars with this pitch. Boom. So we figured it out, we went from 0 to a million and then beyond almost overnight. And now as soon as you get from a million to ten, all these headaches start coming in. This happened to Clickfunnels, when we went from 0 to a million. As soon as the webinar pitched worked, like two weeks we were at a million bucks. It blew up fast. And then all of the sudden all the new nightmares came. That’s when you go, management and people and support and all this other crap that happens, but that’s phase two. After you figure out the selling system that will profitably sell your thing for forever. So we figured that out and boom all the sudden new strengths, problems and opportunities came out from your ten million. Now you passed that you’re going from 10 to 50, now you’re looking at the next phase of that thing. And that’s kind of where we’re…..we’re kind of treading water right now in our company.
But for most of you guys, that’s the key. So for this person who is struggling, that’s what they’re stuck at. They’re stuck at that 0 to a million and they haven’t’ figure out how to sell the product yet. So the next two things. First off, we talked about first. You’ve got to be in a business where you can consistently and profitably generate customers. Number two you’ve got to figure out how in the world to sell your thing. That means, maybe try a webinar. Maybe that doesn’t work. Maybe try a membership site, maybe that doesn’t work. You’ve got to try 5, 6, 10, 15 things. Whatever it takes. Because one of them will work you just have to figure out which one it is. As soon as you figure out, boom this is the method of how I will sell to the people of this world is through a webinar, or is through phone sells, or is through Facebook ads, whatever that is. As soon as you figure out how to profitably sell that thing, boom now you’ve got the key and now you start scaling your business.
So those are the two things guys. Step one, profitably and consistently generate customers. Step two you’ve got to figure out the selling system to sell your product to those people, also profitably, by the way. And that’s it. Now, for this person the advice I gave, I promise was not the advice they wanted to hear, and I’m probably going to hear back from them later today or tomorrow telling me that I’m wrong or they’re upset or whatever and I understand that because what I told them. I said, “If you can’t figure out how to profitably and consistently generate customers, you are not a business. So one thing you can do is keep trying and trying and spend another two or three years in this thing, or you got to shut down shop. You need to stop. You need to, what does Mr. Wonderful say in Shark tank? You hate money….I can’t remember what he says, this is where money goes to die. You’ve got to stop. There’s got to be….we’re taught our hold life, don’t become quitters, but there’s a point in your life and things in your life, you have to quit.” All the signs are telling you this is not working and so you need to stop and say, look this doesn’t work.” And shut down shop.
That might mean shutting down your business, it might mean declaring bankruptcy, it might mean, I don’t know what that means for you and its’ going to be scary and fear associated with it, and a whole bunch of bad things you don’t want to do, but it’ll be worth it. Okay, I’ve had what, three or four times in my business life where I have had to shut things down and start over. And every single time I’ve had to go through so much pain, and it’s so intense, I even think about it, I can feel it inside of my chest and my hands are sweating just thinking about the pain I had to go through during those times when my business didn’t keep working. It was deteriorating and I was freaking out. I couldn’t figure out how to profitably generate new customers and I had to stop. Sometimes I stopped early, which I was grateful for, because it causes a lot less pain, it causes a little of sharp pain, but it went away fast. Other times I freaking hung on to the ship while it was sinking, to the point where I almost got drug under two or three times. You’d think I’d learn by now.
So my job is to come in and kind of help warn you guys. Say, “Look, bad things could be happening if these things aren’t happening in your business. If you have not figured out a way to profitably sell your product yet, you better try a whole bunch of ways quick because you have to figure out what is and you’re not able to consistently and profitably generate customers, another big warning flag.” So those things are all figure out-able, is that the right word? You can figure those things out, but you’ve got to try. And if you’re in a business and you’re like, “I can’t generate a customer for under $30, $40. Then it’s the wrong business to be in. It’s time to start over. It’s time to figure out…the nice thing about entrepreneurs is we can create and do whatever we want. If your business isn’t profitable right now, guess what? It doesn’t hurt to start and start something new that could be profitable in like a week from now. The hardest thing is our willingness to do that.
I had a friend, I feel bad for this guy. I’d gotten in the business and this is again, over a decade ago. And I met him in a time, he’d been in the business for 2 years, he’d written this e-book and he was super proud of it. And when I first met him I was like, “Man, this book is good. Does it work? Are you selling it?” And he was like, “No.” and I was like, “Why not?” and he was like, “I can’t figure it out. I’m trying all sorts of things.” And he kept trying and trying. And then year one went to year two and three and four. I was about 5 years into my business and I remember having this conversation with him again and he was still trying to sell this book. I’m like, “Man, in the time that you’ve been trying to sell this book, I’ve sold probably 30 or 40 different products. Some of them worked, some of them bombed. Some of them were somewhere in between, but I’m moving forward on things. Dude, you’ve got to stop. No one wants this book. I know that you love it and you put in so much time. Everyone that’s read it told you it was good, but people don’t want it man. You’ve got to stop and change or you’re never going to progress.” And I still remember what he told me. He said, “Russell, I can’t. I’ve spent so much time and energy on this product, I can’t walk away from it now.” That was the last conversation I had with him. It’s probably been 7 or 8 years now and I don’t know…..I know he’s not in the business, or I would know.
So anyway, that’s what I wanted to kind of give you feedback. I know it’s not pretty and it’s not nice, but some of you guys need to hear. And if you have figured that out, you do have a business that is profitably generating customers consistently, you’ve figured out your selling system, now it’s time to start scaling it. As soon as you figure those pieces out, you should be able to grow fast. Like Clickfunnels, as soon as we figured it out, boom this is the webinar, this is the pitch, we went to a million dollars quick and then to ten quick. As soon as you figure those pieces out it should be scaleable. It should be really quick and fast and easy. Well, easy from the sales standpoint. Then all the sudden it transitions to the new headaches that show up when you pass a million dollars in sales, but that’s what that book’s for. So go read Ready Fire, Aim, and read chapter two when you’re there. But don’t read ahead. You don’t need that. Just figure out, just focus on going from 0 to a million, that should be where most of our minds are at right now. When you cross that barrier, reopen the book, read chapter two and figure out the next step.
So that’s what I got for you guys today. I’m at the office, I gotta do some work. I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.