A quick glimpse behind the scenes of what I'm really doing to build and launch my funnels.
On this episode Russell talks about being the contractor of your business and finding awesome people to do the work you need to get done. He also talks about failing and why you should expect to fail many times before you find something that works.
Here are some of the informative things you will hear in today's episode:
So listen below to find out why finding good people and failing is actually really important in building a successful business.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing In Your Car. Sorry, I just get excited. Anyway, it’s crazy here. We’ve had 5 snow days in a row, but today the kids finally, finally got to go back to school, which is nice. But everything is soaking wet. It’s been raining and flooding. Our house flooded. We have a lot of damage. So that’s kind of a nightmare.
But the good news is we just went to the new office and it’s getting close to done. We’re about two weeks away from moving into it, which is the most exciting thing in the world. And as we’re sitting here in the office, and I thought about it last night. Last night I finished, I finished! What? I finished the Expert Secrets book. At least this round of it. This is the most painful round of edits thought. It took a lot of time. I have one more round of edits after this, but it’ll go away faster.
So I’m pretty much, for all intents and purposes done with the Expert Secrets book, I’m so proud of it. The crazy thing is it’s almost, its within like 100 words of the Dotcom Secrets book, which is weird. That was not planned, but it’s kind of cool too.
So when I got done with that it was 1 in the morning, so I started looking at all the cool projects we have. We use Trello, some of you guys know. James Friel got us set up on Trello, so I was thinking of the projects. So I sat down and I’m like, “Who are all the people involved in getting this project done? What are all the talks?” So I sat down last night and just busted out a whole bunch of Trello cards. Assigning people, getting them doing what they’re supposed to be doing. All the pieces. Then it was done and I went to bed and passed out and it was awesome.
Anyway, I was thinking about that versus how some of you are running your business and I want to just liken this also to the new office. I’m in a new office and the contractor dude is there, and he’s kind of showing us everything and what’s interesting as I look at this, is that the contractor didn’t actually do anything really. If you think about it, right? He was sitting there and he got paid by me, I think, I don’t know how much contractors take, 10, 20, 30% or whatever, they get paid a bunch of money.
So we pay him and he’s like, “Cool.” So then he goes and is like, “Alright, we need a designer.” And hires a designer. And he’s like “Oh, we need someone to do this part.” And he hires someone. And all the contractor’s really good at doing is just knowing what are all the pieces that need to go into launching, or to completing and building, and then hopefully he’s put in time to find really good sub-contractors to do each of those pieces. And that’s it. And he gets paid the lion’s share of the project. And all he’s doing is he’s just figured out what are all the pieces that go into building an office, or house or whatever the project is. And then who are all the people I need to hire to do those pieces.
I was thinking about that, for me with our funnels and stuff, that’s all it is. Because I’ve done it so many times, I’ve done this now I think I’m on my thirteenth year or so of this business. Some people are funny, “How come all the things you do are successful.” The reason why is because I built up a really good team of people over the last 12 years. I look at myself almost like the contractor in my business. I know all the pieces that go into us successfully launching something. I don’t have to rethink that, I just know it. It’s second nature now because I’ve done it so many times.
There was a time and a season of my life where we were literally launching something at least once a month and if that once a month thing would fail, we would do one every single week until one didn’t fail because that’s how we had to pay payroll. It was a nightmare, but we launched things all the time. Because of that, I know the process. I know that to get something launched here all the things. I know everything inside of my head. And because I’ve been doing it so long, every single time I’m finding, initially it was me doing everything. But then I realized I’m not very good at design, so I hired a designer. Then I realized this and I hired…..I probably hired a hundred designers in the last 12 years. Now I know 3 or 4 that I really liked and I now I just work with those 3 or 4 people.
I probably hired a hundred website builders. I hired a hundred programmers, probably a thousand programmers. I’ve done all these things over the years, and from that I’ve got my hands full of 4 or 5 favorites. So when I know I have a project done, I know Rob’s going to do this, so and so’s going to do this, boom, boom, boom. I task the whole thing out and everyone starts working on it. And what’s cool for me, as the contractor, this isn’t true in all cases, but in the building, the people can’t frame the building until the person is finished doing the foundation. There’s things that have to go in order.
With what we do in our business, most people can do their thing independent of everyone else. The video guy can do videos independent of everyone else. The designers can do that. The copywriters, everyone do the thing indepently. The goal is getting everyone to start on all the pieces as soon as humanly possible. Everyone is doing the pieces and they start coming in and then the last step, which for me as a person is my favorite part, so I do it now. But I could have outsourced the part. For me it’s like, here’s all the pieces now, these are all the things I needed to get this funnel done, now I just need to plug them all in. Because of Clickfunnels, I just plug them in. And obviously I work with Steven Larsen on my team.
We plug all the pieces in and it’s ready to launch. But if you look at all the projects I have, what’s interesting is I’ve got the next probably 10 funnels completely done. Front end project is done, everything is done. I just have to, all the assets are sitting in Trello boards finished just waiting for me to say, “Okay, I’m ready to launch this one.” Then I login, spend a day and plug all the pieces in and boom it’s ready to go.
In fact, yesterday we were working on the Funnel University Newsletter, if you’re not a member of Funnel University yet, by the way, you’re insane. Go to funnelu.com. Anyway, we were…. I got a……are you kidding me? Road closure. Dangit. There’s some huge pot holes up here. Okay, so now I’m on a road closure and I’m going through a neighborhood and I have no idea. Dang, I’m really bad at these kind of things. I’m so bad at directions. I’m just going to follow the headlights in front of me and pray they’re going the same direction I’m going.
Anyway, where did I leave off? So yesterday we were doing January’s Funnel University Newsletter and in the newsletter I was showing the Marketing In Your Car funnel, which we reacently launched and you have all seen. The strategy behind it, the marketing in your car funnel was a couple of reasons. One was to get you guys all indoctrinated listening to Marketinginyourcar.com every single day. That was number one, number two is to get more subscribers. Number three, this was actually our core reason, is I’m trying to get people to join Funnel University. You probably saw that in the upsell sequence.
Yesterday in the newsletter I was showing how basically if you look at probably the next dozen funnels we roll out, they will be new, cool front ends to help build our cult-ture and get people excited about Clickfunnels. So different swag things, different cool things, but then the upsell sequence is all pushing, the upsell sequence is identical, it does not change. So I literally in 40 minutes, and I record the whole process, all the Funnel U. Members will be able to see it inside the new forum we’re setting up for you guys. I took the Marketing In Your Car funnel and cloned it.
I already had the video done, I already had the graphics. Everything was already done weeks ago, months ago actually. I just drag and drop, boom, boom, in 40 minutes the new funnel is ready to launch and it was done. It came because I knew, whatever, 6 months ago, that I wanted to do a project called Funnel Graffiti. I knew, in fact, it’s been almost a year, because we gave out funnel Graffiti at the last Funnel Hacking Live event, so it’s been a year. So then we filmed the video this summer.
But I tasked all this stuff out a long time ago, so it’s all sitting there done and as soon as I’m ready to launch it, it was done. So it took 45 minutes to launch this funnel because I had all these things done. So that’s the powers, if all of us as marketers start looking more at our business as we’re contractors as opposed to the actual sub-contractor working, and you can sub-contract out to yourself, especially the stuff you like to do, I’m guessing if you’re like me, you like building stuff in Clickfunnels, so sub-contract that out to you or a certified partner or whatever. But look at yourself more as a contractor, and become a master at understanding what are all the pieces that go into launching a funnel.
And the funny thing is that the only way to know all the pieces that go into launching a funnel, is by launching a funnel. In fact, I try to get this through people’s minds all the time. Because everyone thinks their first funnel is going to be a winner, right. So they create this funnel and go through all the pain and heartache and headache that go through making your first funnel. And there’s a lot. You have to figure out how to write copy, to edit pages, and images and videos and orders and products. There’s so much crap that goes into your first one and then it’s horrible.
And most of the time your first one will fail, you will not make any money. In fact, most of the time you will lose money. It’ll be a bucket of money with a hole in the bottom and the cash will be pouring out of it. But you have to be okay with that because the only way for you to learn every single step in the process, for you, is to do it once.
Always tell people that the first funnel, you’re going to spend so much time and effort, and it might fail. In fact, you’re probably going to fail but you gotta be okay with that. Because it’s not about you launching this funnel and making a bunch of money, its about you as a new contractor, a new funnel builder learning a new process, all the pieces that go into that. Because after you do it once you’re like, “Dang, well now I know I need this and this. I hired these people, this guy sucked and this one was awesome. I’m not going to hire him again, I’m going to hire a new person.” And you keep doing that over and over again and eventually after you launch three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty funnels, whatever that is, you will have your dream team of people that are working with you. You will know exactly who to go to every single time.
And if you fast forward six months to a year from now, you’re going to be in the same situation I am. I don’t fail anymore because I know our team. I know what our market wants. I know who is going to do each piece of it, so I can quickly create something and just have it work really, really quickly. For you guys that’s the goal.
I had two interviews yesterday from people that were asking about the whole “You’re just one funnel away” concept, that’s the theme of this year’s Funnel Hacking Live event. And I wanted, during those interviews I explained, “Look, you’re just one funnel away, you don’t know which funnel that is. I wish I could show you guys the landscape of failed funnels that I’ve had in my 12 years in this business.” I’ve got more failed funnels that I could show you, than I guarantee most of you guys have ever even dreamt of attempting. But because of that, that’s how I built my team. How I figured out what didn’t work. I’ve mastered the process. All the pieces that go in there like the back of my hand. I don’t have to think anymore, it just happens.
So today, excuse me, last night I was like, “here’s the project, here are all the pieces.” I tasked them all out and now everyone’s working on them. I’m not sure when we’ll launch that project, but I do know that the second I’m ready for it, all the pieces will be there and I don’t have to think about it at that point. I’m digging my well before I’m thirsty. I’m getting all the things in place.
So think about that you guys. Again, this whole concept, “You’re one funnel away” Is so powerful. You don’t know which funnel it’s gonna be. You’ve gotta keep building, walking, trying, failing, moving forward. A really cool, I might have shared this with you guys before so forgive me if I have, but it’s worth repeating. Probably almost ten years ago now, maybe even more, I got this Jay Abraham course and I was listening to it. And one of the speakers was Brian Tracey. I had never heard Brian Tracey speak before and he was on stage, and it was just, I loved what he was saying.
I remember what he talked about; he said that one day he was watching this TV show with a bunch of millionaires. It was like a news talk show or whatever. There’s like twelve millionaires on stage and they were interviewing them and asking a bunch of questions. And the host asks a question, “How many times did you guys have to fail on average before you had success?” and they didn’t know off the top of their heads, so they cut to commercial. During the commercial break they did all the math and figured it out. They came back, and this panel of people, they said that they figured on average, they’d each failed about 12 times before they had success.
Brian Tracey said something interesting, he said, “Do you think that they just tried something and failed, tried something and failed. And on average the 12th time they got lucky and it finally worked? Or do you think that the first time they did it, they didn’t have the resources or the connections, or people, or idea or whatever, but they did it and it failed. The second one, they did it and it failed. The third, they did it and it failed. Each time they failed they learned something. And they figured something out and literally by the 12th time, they had failed every way possible.” By the 12th time they knew how this process worked and there was no way they can fail at that point.
It’s like Thomas Edison, he said when he, every time he failed the light bulb, he was like I figured out a new way to not build a light bulb. He had a thousand ways he tried and didn’t work, but he didn’t look at those as failures. That way didn’t work, that way didn’t work. Cool, this way it worked. We gotta look at things that way as well, you guys. So many of us are getting into this like, ”I want a million dollar webinar.” And I’m like, dude that’s awesome, but you gotta put in the work man. Let me tell you how many decades of effort. I guess just one. But I mean, for me to be able to do what I do now, we can do a webinar and make half a million bucks, it didn’t just come magically. It came on the back of ten years of failing and failing and trying and failing and building a team, and learning and growing and learning and growing and coming to that.
Obviously, we’ve tried to give you guys a lot of short cuts. Perfect Webinar is a short cut. Clickfunnels is a short cut. Honestly, Facebook’s a short cut. Facebook’s the greatest gift to marketers right now, in the world. And I don’t think it will be here forever, but it’s here now and it’s amazing. All these short cuts, so hopefully you guys don’t have to spend ten years, but do know you are going to have to spend some time. And do know you are going to fail, but if you keep it in your mind that you’re just one funnel away….I don’t know if that funnel is today, tomorrow, a month from now, six months from now, but if you have that in your mind knowing with absolute certainty that one of these funnels is going to be the one, it’s going to be the freedom maker for you. You have absolute certainty of it, you keep building, moving forward, pushing, I promise you will hit that. But you have to have absolute certainty that it’s going to happen.
One of the interviews yesterday, someone asked me, “What was the “why” behind what got you into this thing and why you push yourself so hard?” I said, “When I got started, I was watching these people online who were having success. Back then in was Armand Morin, Alex Mandossian, Marlin Sanders, my mentors. Mark Joyner. All I know is I looked at these guys and I believed them. I believed that what they were doing was making them money and because I saw them doing it, I had 100% absolute certainty that it worked and that I could make it work. I didn’t know how, but I was positive that I could and it would. Because of that I didn’t stop. Because I had perfect that it was going to work, so I just started running and running and running.”
I think a lot of problems that some of us have is that we don’t have faith. “I think this can work. I think this can work for me.” And because of that you try and dabble and try and dabble and doing quite go all in, but if you know with absolute certainty that there’s no way this is going to fail, it’s going to take you a bunch of times, but you know that’s it’s gonna work. It’ll push you through the hard nights, the failures, the funnel flops. But it’ll be worth it. I promise you guys it’s worth it. It’s not only worth it for you and your family, because the money that comes from it is amazing, but it’s worth it for the people you are serving with the products and service you are creating.
You will touch their lives in a way that doesn’t make sense to you now, but when you see it and you see the fruits of that, it’s pretty amazing. So I want to leave that with you guys today. I hope that helps. I’m at the office now. I’m going from the new amazing office to the old crappy office. In the old crappy office two more weeks or so, then we’re out of here.
Appreciate you all, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, or any of them, please go to iTunes and rate and review us, I’d appreciate that. Please become an affiliate for Marketing In Your Car, free MP3 player, let people know about it because that’d be cool. Thanks you guys. Appreciate you all, have an awesome day. Bye everybody.