Last night, Russell cut the deals on a 3-5 million dollar a year opportunity, and woke up this morning feeling awesome. Find out why on today’s podcast.
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Good morning, everyone. This is Russell Brunson, and welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. Hey guys and gals, so we’re not far from Christmas. I hope you guys are excited. I’m recording this on a Friday, and Christmas is next Wednesday. And just, I’m so excited, like, here I am, trying to get all the stuff done because January I’m excited to hit the road running with kind of a whole new business model and new plans and new focuses.
And some of the stuff I’ve been talking about over in the last few weeks. And I’m just fired up. And what I want to talk about today, though, was a little bit different, because, you know, marketers and entrepreneurs are always looking at, like, opportunities, right? And there’s so many opportunities in this world. It always makes me laugh. I have some friends that are broke, and broke people always complain because there’s no opportunities.
There’s not many opportunities, I don’t have a job, I don’t have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And I’m in the opposite side, where there’s so many opportunities I can’t even sleep at night thinking about them. And one of my big a-ha’s that I learned this year, I guess I kind of re-learned it this year, was learning how to say No to opportunities. And I think one of the best ways you can make money in this world is learning how to say no to a really, really good opportunity.
And it’s hard. You know, obviously there’s going to be opportunities that — sorry, I’m driving and the lady is crazy across the street. Anyway, there’s going to be opportunities that are so good that are harder to pass up. For example, this year one of the big opportunities that came across my plate was Rippln. And it was something that I thought was going to be huge. In fact, it was huge, as you know.
We got 1.5 million members, but after we did our heavy lifting on the front end, the back end didn’t really kind of fulfil on the promises. And it just kind of went away. But I look at — I spent probably two to three months of last year focusing on that, spending off time and energy and effort. And when all was said and done, the amount of money they made was close to nothing.
But you’ve seen like Napoleon Dynamite, when he’s out there, when Napoleon’s out there and he’s doing all the work with the chickens. And then he gets paid in like, change, and he adds it all up, and he’s like, “Man, I made like a dollar an hour.” That’s kind of how I felt afterwards. For the effort I put in, man, it was just tough. It took three months of the year. A third, or I guess that’s a fourth of the year.
But again it was, it could have been, and it should have been a huge opportunity. And so you never know which ones you are going to hit and miss, and that’s why it’s tough sometimes to realize, you know, what do I try, what do I not try. And I had a guy the other day promote with me, like, “Russell, you need to be a part of this, this is the biggest new business opportunity in the word.”
And then trying to sell me on it, and how much money people were making and on and on and on. I remember I messaged him back, and I said, “You know what? I would love to, but the answer is no.” I said, you know, “I’ve learned over the last year that I make more money by turning away opportunities than I do by chasing opportunities. Because I’ve got enough. I’ve got something I’m focusing on that new opportunities don’t always mean more money.”
And I look back over this last year, you know, two years ago I was back in the shiny object syndrome. We had set up I think 11 or 12 different new companies. Last December, a year ago right now, we had a big publishing meeting, we had all the people who were publishing came in. And we were so excited about the next year what are we going to do, how are we going to roll all these different offers, and all these new things.
And this year, because we had so many different offers it was hard to focus. And so, slowly throughout this year I’ve basically gone back to my partners. And although we had invested $20 or $30 or $40,000 for each of these offers, in some cases, I just gave them back to the partners who walked away and just said, “Hey, Marry Christmas, here’s a gift. I’m just going to give it back to you and let you run with it. Because I’ve got to focus on the stuff that’s making me money.”
And it was hard. Every time I made a call to those partners, and just said, “Hey, sorry, I have to step away from this, but here’s all the assets you made, you can just have them, it’s a gift to you.” Every time, like, I was sick to my stomach to do it, because I knew how much money I was losing and missing out on. And how much money I had already invested that I was not ever going to recoup.
Every time I gave one back and I stepped away, the next morning I woke up and it was kind of like, if you have ever broken up with a girlfriend or fired an employee, you wake up the next morning and you know it was the right decision and you feel just awesome. And so I basically, over the last year, have cut some huge opportunities that I focused on. That I had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on and never became fruitful.
We just cut them. And I looked and there’s probably three or four real good opportunities that we have that we’re focusing on, and that’s it. And so, that’s kind of what we’re doing. In fact, this kind of came to a head, which is why I’m doing this podcast about these topics, because yesterday I cut a project that I think could have made $2 or $3 million next year.
And I cut it, and I walked away from it, and I was scared and I was nervous and I was frustrated. And today I woke up with a huge smile on my face, just knowing that because I said no to that opportunity, I didn’t lose $2 or $3 million. I think that I will be able to make $5 or $6 or $7 million more in my core companies because I lost that distraction, that thing.
And it was a big deal, something that I had been working on for two or three months, and run a bunch of friends and partners into it. It was a deal with one of the guys from Shark Tank. And so, it could have, should have been big, and it just kept, every time I get back into it, it just kept changing and morphing and not being quite what I had initially agreed to.
And finally, yesterday, I just kind of said, you know, I just can’t do this anymore, and I told him, I told the other partners, I told everyone. And like I said, I was nervous, I was scared. But man, today I feel great. I’m going in today and it’s one less huge project off my plate. I can focus again on the things that I know are going to make me money. Things that I’m doing every single day.
And so, I guess my bit of wisdom I want to drop on you guys today, and before the new year starts, is really look at the opportunities you have in front of you. I’m guessing you’re probably chasing two or three or four or five different shiny objects, if you’re at all like most entrepreneurs. And the best advice I can give you is cut all except for the one that you think is the best potential of being your big home run.
And just focus 100% of your efforts and energies, and focus on that one thing. And if you do that, you say no to opportunities, and you just focus on the one that you’re already committed to. That’s where you’re going to see the success you want this year. That’s how you’ll go from, you know, floundering or doing well but not doing what you want to do, to being hyper-successful, is when all your focus is on that one thing.
And this going back to keep, every few years I have to re-remind myself of this, because I get caught up in just like all the rest of us. Tony Robbins says, over and over and over again, where focus goes, energy flows, and it’s true. So, pick your one opportunity, pick the one that’s going to be your winner, focus on that, and cut out all the rest. And I promise you guys, you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling so much better.
So that’s it. I’m at the office today. I’m about to go chase after my primary opportunity. I’m excited. I hope you guys are excited as well. It’s going to be a great year coming up. If you enjoy this podcast, please share on Facebook, Twitter, wherever you’ve got avenues. So share it with other entrepreneurs because I enjoy doing it. I think it can help all you guys all a lot as well. Thanks again, and I will talk to you guys soon.