As you grow, your weaknesses will start to show, here is how to strengthen those holes as they are exposed.
On today’s episode Russell talks about setting a goal last year to pay off his house, and why it was so important to him. He also talks about fortifying his business to make sure it can’t be destroyed by something stupid. Here are some of the cool things to look for in this episode:
So listen here to see how you can bump up your security at home and at your business.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, so I have not done a podcast for a little while and the main reason is that I am honestly on my death bed. I can barely breathe right now and I apologize if I’m coughing. But I must get some messages out.
I had a really cool Christmas episode I wanted to do and I was just literally dying so I couldn’t. But I still think I’m going to do it. Maybe I’ll do it as a New Years episode instead. Anyway, that’s kind of, basically what happened, New Years Eve we were getting, my brother and Brent and his family were coming over for dinner, and right before they showed up I started feeling really sick, my legs hurt and stuff. So I took some medicine and that’s where it began. And I’ve had since then, it’s been six days now, a fever between 103 and 104 degrees since then.
Which means I’ve been forced to be in bed and haven’t eaten anything. So I’ve lost 15 pounds in the last, since then. So the one positive of everything else is I didn’t have to do cardio to lose weight, so that was pretty sweet. But I haven’t eaten anything yet in a week, and I’m still not hungry so I’m just going to keep riding it until my body tells me I’m hungry again.
Anyway, I’m feeling a little better today. My cough is harder today, so that’s the only thing that’s kind of hurting. But I’m just too excited right now about where I’m about to go. So I want to share with you guys because, it’s funny, I have this weird fear about sharing this with you guys, and I don’t know why. I think I might know why.
So some of the back story of this is I actually, my dad bought me the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Actually let me rewind before that. So before I got the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book, my dad always told me you should try to pay off your house first. Because I remember he paid his house off and he was all excited, he was like, “Yeah, you always want to pay your houses off, that’s just one of those things you want to do.”
In fact, I did an episode on this probably 3 or 4 months ago, about paying your house off first. The reasoning is because it gives you the security of your house being paid off, gives you the ability to go out there and risk as an entrepreneur, which we have to make crazy risks sometimes. It’s hard though, to risk things if you’re like, my family could lose their house. That’s the weird fear there.
Anyway, when my dad got me the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book, I read that and it was talking about assets and investments and I was like, “You’d be a moron to pay your house off. Why would you ever do that? It doesn’t make any sense.” I remember asking my dad that. I was like, “Why would you? That doesn’t make any sense Dad. All the money is just sitting there.” and he said, “You know what? It may be sitting there and it may not be the smartest investment in the world, it might even be a dumb investment. But I tell you what, you sleep better at night knowing that it’s paid off. Knowing that no matter what you risk as an entrepreneur, you’re not going to lose that, your house. And your family will always have a house to be in.”
So after that point I always wanted to pay off my house and I remember the first house my wife and I bought, we lived there for ten or eleven years. It wasn’t a crazy house, it was a nice house. And I always wanted to pay it off, but just never was able to. And towards the end I knew I wanted to buy another house, I just put a lot of money into that.
And then we bought this new house 3 years, it’s kind of a crazy house. And I was like, dang. My goal initially, I want to pay it off within a year of buying it. And I was not able to. And it was kind of a crazy, I don’t think it was a real goal. I was like, I told people that because it’d be kind of cool. And then the second year went by and I’d taken a big whack down on the house and we also built a big pool house that summer and a couple of other things.
But we hadn’t paid it off, so last Christmas time, or last New Years I set some New Year’s resolutions and I had two New Year’s resolutions. One was to get a pass of industry outside of Clickfunnels to cover my monthly living expenses, which is less than $20 grand a month. So I was like I need something that covers $20 grand a month that I could live for free even if the business disappeared. And the second thing would be to pay off my house. So that was my goal a year ago.
And then right after that we had the, if you go back in time and listen to the podcast, storming and flooding and our house flooded. Craziness. We rehabbed the whole house, it took 8 months. And then we built a huge crazy soccer field, all sorts of things that I was still paying a lot of money towards the house, trying to get it paid off, but it’s a big, it’s 11 thousand square foot house on five acres, it’s a big house.
Anyway, last week I message my accountant, our CFO, I don’t even know what to call him. He’s awesome. I messaged him, I was like, “Hey Clint, can I pay my house off this year, is that possible?” and he’s all, “I’ll get back to you.” So he got back to me after a little while, he’s like, “Yep if you want to, you’ll be fine.” I’m like, “Are you serious?”
So I just on my death bed, went into the office and I picked up this piece of paper right here with this check inside and it is literally the paperwork to go pay off my house. And I’m driving to the bank right now, going to meet my wife over there and I’m paying my house off right now and it’s going to be gone. And now I’ll never, I don’t even know….I’m kind of freaking out and I’m excited and it’s going to be the coolest thing ever.
I don’t think I’ve been this excited about anything ever. The cool thing is I’m picking up my parents tonight at 11:30 at night, I’m picking them up from the airport. I’m so excited to tell my dad. Say, “Dad, guess what? I paid off my house.” There you go, that’s kind the fun, exciting thing I wanted to share with you guys.
Alright so I do have a message today that is pertinent to everybody. The last thing I’ve been trying to do from my death bed this last week before the end of the year, was basically to figure out where are the weaknesses in my business and how do I fortify against those weaknesses.
For me, it’s not weaknesses in people, maybe in a couple places we need different people or the right people, or things like that, there’s just holes, there’s gaps in the business, things that you don’t pay attention to because of whatever your personality type is that you don’t see or you don’t notice. So I’m trying to identify those and figure out what those things are. Where are places that you could be destroyed?
Like legally, are you legally compliant on everything? Are you doing this right? Things like that. Where are the gaps you have in your business that you could literally get destroyed if you’re not careful.
In the good old Book of Mormon, I’m going to show you guys another story from there, but it’s important. There was a, in fact, if you’ve read the Expert Secrets book I talk about a guy named Captain Moroni and this was, I believe it is actually him telling the story, I might be wrong. But basically, he was protecting his city. In most places they have, this is where the armies are at, but between where all their strong guards were at, they had these weaknesses. So Captain Moroni was like, “okay, we need to fortify our weak spots.”
He said, “Because even our, especially our enemies, they know where our weak spots are at. They know how to destroy. We need to strengthen them.” So he went and started fortifying and putting armies and people and stuff in place to protect their weak places. And they did that and when the armies came to try to storm them and get them shut down, they weren’t able to because they fortified their weaknesses and strengthened them.
So for me, that’s been really our goal for the last couple of weeks, where are we weak? Where could we be in trouble? What things have we done stupidly that we just didn’t pay attention to? Things that we as entrepreneurs, running so fast a million miles a minute, we don’t think about a little thing here, a thing there. Where do the pieces we’re missing, where are the holes that we need to fortify?
And then we’re actively fortifying those things and those pieces and getting people in place, or the structure or systems or the legal docs, or whatever those things are to try to fortify ourselves. And that’s kind of what I wanted to share with you guys today. I think that is important for all of us to look at. I know my credit union bank is somewhere around here, but I don’t know where exactly it’s at. So I’m going to pay this thing, oh there it is. Sweet.
Anyway, so that’s what I want to share with you guys. Start thinking through those things. Because a lot of times, us entrepreneurs get so obsessed with the marketing and sale of our thing, which is obviously the most important part, that we forget about the protection of that thing.
So that’s my recommendation, to spend some time this holiday season, thinking about how to protect your thing so you don’t ever lose it. Just things that are stupid. The only reason that your business should not be successful is if the market doesn’t want your product or service. That makes sense. All the other reasons are stupid and they come from us not protecting ourselves. With that said, protect yourself, fortify yourself against those holes and gaps. I hope that helps. Thanks everybody, talk to you guys all again soon.