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Marketing Secrets

Welcome To Russell Brunson’s Marketing Secrets Podcast. So, the big question is this, “How are entrepreneurs like us, who didn’t cheat and take on venture capital, who are spending money from our own wallets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and services and things that we believe in out to the world… and yet still remain profitable?” That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Russell Brunson, and welcome to MarketingSecrets.com.
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Now displaying: Page 7
Apr 12, 2017

A bunch of the cool stuff I got from my day with Brendon Burchard.

On today’s special Marketing From An Airplane, Russell talks about a meeting he had with Brendon Burchard and why he is taking a private jet back home to Boise.

Here are some of the cool things you will get to hear in this episode:

  • What cool ninja tricks Russell learned from Brendon and what ninja tricks Russell was able to give to him.
  • How Brendon is able to take 17 weeks of vacation a year and why Russell wants to be able to do something similar.
  • And the different approaches Russell and Brendon have when it comes to people recognizing them in public.

So listen below to hear about the awesome things Russell learned from Brendon and find out why you should never use the bathroom on a private jet.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you guys to, actually Marketing in Your Airplane. Hopefully you guys can hear me, it’s kind of loud in here. I’m literally in my own private airplane right now.

Let me tell you the back story. So earlier yesterday, actually it goes back a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago I went to a Mastermind meeting at Dean Graziosi’s office and a bunch of cool people were there. And one of the cool people was Brendon Burchard. Brendon and I met probably ten years ago. I always respected him, and we kind of talked a few times, but we never really got to know each other. That was the first mastermind we sat together for the whole day. Towards the end I was just like, man, if you look at our industry and then the personal development industry, we’re on the outside obviously because there’s no other options but in our world, me and him are definitely have the biggest companies.

We never hung out, we never shared notes or talked about what worked or what didn’t work, things like that. So I messaged him a couple days later, “Hey, we should get together and just hang out, and share notes on what we’re both doing and hopefully get some ideas.” And he was like, he gave me three days, “I got this day and this day and this day.” In different parts of the country, and I was like, “Vegas sounds perfect.” because it’s an easy flight out of Boise. So I booked the thing and then yesterday morning I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning, flew out to hang out with him. We hung out all day and then I’ll talk about what we talked about here in a minute.

But then at the end of the day I get a message from Melanie, my assistant, actually voxed me and said, “Your flight got delayed, and it was a connecting flight, so that one you’re going to miss. I’m trying to find another flight, everything direct is sold out.” And all sorts of stuff. She couldn’t get me out that day. And then Brendon is like, “Oh don’t worry man. I’ll take care of you.” I’m like, “What’s that mean?” He’s like, “Hold on.” And he called a couple of numbers and he’s like, “Okay, there’s a jet picking you up in the morning and they’ll fly you back to Boise.” I’m like, “are you kidding me?”

Dang, look at that. Oh you guys can’t see it. I’m looking out the window and there’s a jet flying past this jet. There’s jet streams. What? That was cool.

Anyway, he’s got an account with JetSuite. He just called them up and then they flew to Vegas, and they picked me up this morning and now we’re flying back to Boise. And I’m literally the only person on this plane. There’s 4 seats, 2 pilots. And it’s the coolest thing in the world.

Also, by the way, we’re starting a vlog, so I’m recording this, so if you guys in the future can see our vlog, it’ll be episode three and we’ll show the whole story. Behind the scenes, show you the flight, if you guys want to see the visuals. You should probably see what I just saw, that’s where you go to check it out. Anyway, so that’s what’s happening right now. I’m flying back home and again, I was trying to fly in the morning and out at night, so I could get back home for Ellie’s soccer game tomorrow, but I missed it unfortunately.  Instead I’m flying in a private plane home, which is insane.

So I’m doing that right now. So while I’m flying home I’ve been kind of taking notes on the cool stuff that Brendon and I talked about. And I obviously can’t share with you, something I just can’t share because they were things he shared with me in confidence. But there are some things I definitely can share.

The number one cool thing, is this cool thing called JetSuite, which is the thing I’m on right now, literally. They pick you up, they fly you, they….I don’t know if it’s possible to get in Boise, but it’s definitely, at first gotta figure out. Honestly I walked right up, jumped in a plane. There’s no waiting and it’s funny because I bill my time, if someone wants to hire me for an hour, I don’t even know what it would be right now. Last time I did, it was 5 grand an hour. Since then I’ve had like five people try to do it, and I turned it down because I didn’t have time for it. Let’s just say it’s 5 grand an hour.

So I saved an hour being in airports. Probably two if you look at landing and coming. So that’s two hours. That’s 10 grand right there I just saved. And then on the flight, there’s wifi, there’s nobody here coughing on me, or sneezing on me. If I had business partners, and my wife and kids, I could get some cool connection time on the plane as opposed to sitting in a normal plane cramped and miserable. So that right there is awesome. So I’m going to be looking for that.

Let’s see, another thing, what’s interesting is Brendon and I were talking, we have different super powers that are different. I think what I’m really good at is building out amazing front end funnels that are profitable from day one. I look at every one of the funnels that we built, especially free plus shipping funnels, all those ones are optimally designed so that when we put a dollar into advertizing, it puts $50 back out immediately into sales. You guys have seen us talk about that, all our break even funnels and stuff like that. I’m really good at that.

And then I look at Brendon, and Brendon’s not quite as good at the front end funnels, but what he’s really good at, when someone comes into his funnels, for the next 400 days there’s a sequence he goes through and takes them through the 16 or whatever different courses he sells, he pushes people to different events, everything. He does 9 events a year and never promotes any of them outside of the follow up sequence that happens.  He brings someone in the funnel and then the sequence goes for 400+ days, fills 9 events a year. So with all the info products, all the courses, I’m not really looking to share his revenue, but you know, well over 8 figures, multiple 8 figures in this process.

So for him, he’s got these front end funnels that aren’t profitable up front. He drives insane amounts of traffic, and by day 60 he breaks even. It takes 60 days to break even and he knows that. So because of that he goes and spends tons of money of Facebook ads, YouTube ads and radio, those are his three big traffic sources right now, which is cool. I’m going to try radio with my book, which I cannot even wait to do.

And then I look at my business, I’m really good at break even, being profitable right out of the gate, but my long term funnels aren’t that long. I think it’s because, and I talked about this with the inner circle members. I think I had a podcast that talked about this too. But my creativity in our business for a long time was creating new offers, new businesses. That made 3 or 4 million dollars a year, and then we transitioned into having one focus, Clickfunnels, and created offers to get people into Clickfunnels. We went from 3 million to 30 million.

Then my goal to go from 30 to 100 is focusing on new traffic sources. And I look at Brendon, that’s what he’s done. He has these funnels and he’s focusing on traffic sources that he can bring in and then they break even after, hopefully within 60 days of bringing people in. So that’s been kind of my biggest takeaway, is that. He does typically someone comes in his funnel and there’ll be two or three weeks promoting one of his courses, and then he’ll have a two week buffer time. Which is two weeks of him sending amazing videos that tell stories, build relationships and doesn’t sell anything.

Then after two weeks of buffer, he sends people back into another two or three week period where he’s selling the next course. Then he’s got a two week buffer. Back and forth for 400 and something days, which is insanely cool. And I think that my problem, why I haven’t done that in the past is because I’m so excited about the new offer I’m creating all the time, I don’t want people in the long sequences, and I don’t know how to promote the next offer. And he was like, “Why do you keep creating offers.” He’s like, “That’s my problem, I have 16 courses. Why don’t you stop creating courses, and just plug them into this sequence and then you can just focus on driving traffic. That becomes your focal point.”

And the interesting thing about traffic, traffic is the one part of my business that doesn’t require me, which is interesting. The funnel part requires me, because it’s all my creativity, my voice, my videos, but on traffic, it’s like I can step back, and it’s John on my team and his team underneath him who drive the ads, that becomes the focal point. And it’s interesting because I love and I get so good at creating lots of funnels over and over again that I spend insane amounts of time, way too much time.

Brendon told me, I think he takes, I think he said, 17 weeks off a year. I think that’s what he said. 17! 17 weeks. That’s like 4 months, that’s more than 4 months. Over 4 months a year he takes off. I can’t do that, I don’t do that. I’m always in hustle mode, and I think that’s because I’m always creating the next funnels, push all the ads into that funnel and sell it as opposed to all these amazing funnels we’ve created and just put them into a killer, long sequence and then focus on the traffic. Which even the traffic part does not take my whole time. That was the big takeaway for me, that was the huge aha.

So I just kind of look at Brendon, imagine if you took your funnels, you broke even, you 3x’d on day one like we do with all of our funnels. Then instead of break even on day 60 you tripled on day one, and then from there you kept doing what you’re doing. So he was excited about that. I was showing him all our ninja hacks to 3x on day one. And he was showing all the ninja hacks where he can basically not work, because he’s got all the courses lined up sequentially. And it’s interesting, the logical sequential order of things, I always thought that Experts Academy was his biggest business, but it’s not.  In fact, High Performance Academy is his thing, his biggest, that’s his mission, that’s his “date with destiny”.

Tony Robbins has Date with Destiny, which is his pinnacle. For him High Performance Academy is his pinnacle event he’s trying to get people to. And so all of his funnels are focused on getting people, he has no sales people, no nothing. He also has a 30 thousand a year mastermind and a 60 thousand dollar a year mastermind, and a 250 thousand dollar a year, and all those masterminds he doesn’t have any sales people to sell them. They all just come through funnels, which is insane.

I’m like, “But with a sales person it’s really easy, it converts just as many people.” He’s like, “yeah, I don’t worry about that. I just put it out there and some people buy. I just jam enough traffic into it that if one out of every 10 thousand people buy, it all works.” I’m like, “Crazy.” It’s fun to see this whole business through a different lens than my own, which is really cool. So that was one of my biggest takeaways.

So for you guys, if you’re all like me and you work too hard, I think that’s the key. Quit creating tons of new funnels, which I know we all love, it’s so exciting. But focus on, it comes back to follow up funnels, action funnels, like we talked about at Funnel Hacking Live. It’s interesting, I think I did a presentation in December that showed how every dollar made in our break even funnels made $60.73 in our follow up funnels. That was with it in a short, 30 day follow up window, as opposed to what Brendon’s doing where it’s like 400 days.

So anyway, that’s something that I was literally sketching out in my notes from on my private plane. So crazy.  On the plane, trying to figure out how I’m going to do that and what is the sequential order of my products. If someone comes in, my first thing I want to have is Expert Secrets, from there Dotcom Secrets, from there what is the sequential order? What’s the pieces they need and the order they need them? How can I do it the cool way where I spend a couple of weeks getting people into the program, a couple of weeks telling stories, building value to now they love us, and a couple of weeks transitioning back and forth, back and forth.

I think my biggest fear when I look at this is how am I going to create 400 days follow up sequence? And I look at Brendon and he didn’t do a 400 day follow up sequence. He would build one and then another one. I think what I’m going to do is, here’s my thought, and I may change it, but I’ll share with you guys and maybe it’ll give you guys some ideas on your own. I’m going to spend the next 30 days building out a 30 day follow up funnel. So if someone buys the book or anything, whatever they buy, what’s the first thing I want to introduce them to? They buy the book and the book is the initial sequence or whatever. Then all those people, from all my front end offers, so I’m looking at I think 10 or 11 front end offers to bring people into it, all my break even funnels that I love.

So I have a break even funnel, they go to the initial sequence there, after they do then we dump them from there into, and I’ll probably call to action funnel and call it the first 30 days, and then the first 30 days will be like, here’s the process for the first 30 days. Our number one goal for the first 30 days is to get them to buy Clickfunnels. So boom, I’ll take them through the sequence process and they’ll buy Clickfunnels, they’ll watch the webinar, we’ll indoctrinate and tell stories and all that kind of stuff. From there, we’ll share a bunch of content, maybe some Funnel Hacking Live videos to give value.

Then number two, now we got that. What’s the next thing we want to take? So then I’ll probably call it the second 30 days and then the third 30 days. I’ll probably create an action funnel for each one. And at the end of the first 30 days after I build that second 30 days, I’ll go back to the end of the first 30 days and I’ll add in a step in the action sequence that says, “When they finish day 30 move them to the second 30 day sequence.” Then everyone will be past that, then it will be automatically into the second sequence and that way I can just build out 30 days at a time and not stress out about how I’m going to build 400 days. No I’m just going to build 30 days at a time.

And then everyone that buys will be dumped in the first 30 days, here’s the sequence they go through. Everyone will go through the same sequence, same everything. Then at the end of that I’ll start building the next 30 days. Whenever I get it done, then I’ll dump all leads into the second 30 days and then I’ll hook it up so that everyone new coming in past day 30 si on the automatically shifted to the next action funnel. So it could be kind of cool. So maybe after I do this, this is actually a cool product.

That reminded me of something else. Okay, this might be a cool product I do. After I get the first 365, here’s the first 365 day follow up sequence, I may just want to buy that book. Here’s every email for the first 365 days when someone comes into our funnels. So maybe I’ll do that. Yeah, that’d be a cool product. So in a year, I’ll sell that to you guys if you want it. Yeah, that’d be kind of cool.

So this is a cool thing I got from Brendon, which is crazy. This is a couple of years ago, he did his, I can’t remember which course, Expert Academy, one of his products. He ended up selling 2500 of them at $2 grand a piece. A lot of money. Bu then afterwards he was like, “What do I do with all these people?” he was so proud of all the videos and email sequences and all the stuff he had built, so what he did was he took all of the prelaunch videos and burned them on a dvd and then got them all transcribed and then he took all the email swipe files, all that kind of stuff, got them all transcribed, put them in this big book and then he sold, I think for $97 you get the DVD, then the transcripts of the campaign. So anyway, so he sold for $97.

From that he sold over 60 thousand copies, 600 grand, 60 thousand copies at $97 a piece of the marketing material for people to see and model, which is crazy. Insanely crazy. In fact, oh my gosh I got an idea. I’ve got Funnel Hacker Swipe file.com, what if I did that with every campaign we did, start selling the swipe files? That’s interesting. Maybe I do it inside of funnel u? I don’t know, just gives me ideas. But it made an extra $600 grand after just selling the prelaunch materials to the same audience. 3 times bought the marketing material as people who bought the actual product. It’s crazy that people buy the product, the $97 thing he still sells at events everywhere else, people buy that and go through all his marketing material, and then they go back and buy his thousand dollar product now because they want it.

It’s kind of like what Frank Kern does. If you look at Frank Kern business funnel, he creates a product then launches it and after he sells him showing you what he did on that funnel and that’s it. Its like swipe files. Here’s the campaign plus the swipe files and it’s insanely cool. Anywho, so much cool stuff.

Alright, a couple of other cool things I learned from him. He’s obviously, he’s done two products with Oprah, so one of the interesting things he does with every one of his funnels, he has to make sure it’s Oprah proof. Oprah and her people literally go through all his funnels and it has to be clean enough that it’s Oprah proof.  I started thinking about that, are my funnels Oprah proof? Where someone like Oprah came through would they be offended, would they not like it or whatever? Oprah’s obviously not someone I’m going after, but who is the person I’m going after? Who are the people that I want to make sure….thinking about that, is the copy and positioning and all the stuff in your funnel, who is the dream person you want to go after? Would it pass their inspection and be like, this is cool and not scammy or spammy.

In fact, I went to one of my funnels the other day and some weird email came out and I was like, “Ugh.” I remember I hired this guy to write emails and he wrote that email and I’m like, it’s not congruent with me or what I say. So it’s something to think about. The other cool thing he showed me how to do with YouTube ads. So the thing with YouTube ads, there’s a YouTube ad that will be a video of him sharing  3 tips from his book and it pushes people to the book. And the people who watch that will be targeted to watch video number two, which has 3 more tips, and then push the book and then he targets those people to go to video number 3 which is now a recap, “Here’s the 6 tips I talked about before” and pushes them back to the book. And then if they haven’t bought the book after the 3 videos, then he puts them on a “Do not solicit” list. If they haven’t bought from three videos, they will never buy and they have no hope. And you should never follow them or show them ads again.  He puts them on a do not solicit list, which is kind of cool. Kind of a cool strategy as well.

What else, what else? So many cool things. I hope that gives you guys some cool stuff. It was legit amazing, and now I’m sitting in a jet. I have a new love and respect for Brendon. I always said he was cool, but I just didn’t know him or understand him and I think that I had kind of a misconception of him sometimes because, and it was interesting because I always thought he , in his mind he was kind of like me, he sees himself as a marketing dude, teaches marketing stuff. And as I talked to him, it’s completely opposite, he thinks of himself as first off an author, and then his goal, his whole dream in life is personal development and high performance, things like that.

In fact, his next book is called something about high performance as well. He spent two years with a whole research team creating insane stuff, building a test that measures high performance, that’s his huge passion. And he’s like, “I always teach the marketing stuff, you teach marketing better than me. Frank Kern teaches marketing better than me. I’m not the best marketing teacher but you’re all my people who come through all my high performance stuff that want to know how I build this company. So I do Expert Academy once a year just to be like, ‘here’s how I do it. I’m not the best but here’s what I do.’ And it’s become a big thing, but it’s not my focus or main thing. I don’t promote it, I don’t have any front end support. The only way people even know about Expert Academy is on day 200 of the funnel he introduces it to people.”

I was like, that’s really fascinating and interesting. Anyway, I thought that was really, really cool. That’s what I got. So that’s all I wanted to share with you guys I think today. So I’m going to be, I don’t know when I’m landing, but I’m going to keep taking notes and map this thing out. You guys will probably see the fruits of this. My goal, my big takeaways from this whole meeting is to be able to take my amazing funnels and build out an amazing sequence that extends for a long time and putting everything in sequential order and things like that. That’s my number one goal.

And my number two goal to that is from that be able to take more time off. He said he takes 17 weeks off in a year. I don’t know if I could do that, I think I would stress out. Plus, he doesn’t have kids and stuff like that. So he and his wife are able to be like, “Hey lets go to Bali this week.” Or “Hey, let’s go over here.” So they book out, they plan out each month where they’re going and its crazy. I can’t do that, because my kids have school and all these things. But maybe I could be like I’m going to take Friday off, or what if I came home every day at 3 when my kids got home,  or what if I did stuff like once a quarter took a weekend with my wife, or whatever those things are.

So I’m going to start playing with that. That was really inspiring for me. Oh the other cool thing I got from it. I did a podcast the other day how twice in Boise that day I had people come up to me, “Hey Russell.” And ask me questions about me and caught me off guard and I didn’t know how to handle it. It was cool, we were sitting there eating lunch and some guy ran up, “Russell Brunson, I’m a funnel hacker.” And it was kind of awkward for me, and I didn’t really say anything and the guy laughed and an hour later Brendon and I were walking and some guy ran up to Brendon like, “Dude! You’re Brendon Burchard!” It was kind of cool, we both had it happen to us while we were hanging out.

He handled it so much better than I did. It was so cool to see. I was just like, dang. Now I……it wsa cool to see that because he didn’t do what I do. Act like an idiot. He turned around and was like, legitimately excited, “You know who I am? How do you know about my work?” and the guy was like, he wanted to tell him, it was cool Brendon told me he learned that from Paula Abdul. That’s what Paula Abdul did. First off act all excited like, “Whoa.” Then ask them “how do you know my work? How do you know what I do.” And then they’ll be excited to tell the story of how they know you.

He’s also good at, my biggest problem is I think I fear the conversation with people because I don’t know how to end it. I get stuck in these awkward situations and I run away. So what he does is really cool. He asks them that question and then he starts turning his body like I gotta keep going, “That’s really cool. Okay, well we’re in a rush, we have to go but thank you so much for being a follower and a fan. Just so grateful for that.” And something like that. And then we’re able to break away and leave. I even told him after, “Dude, that was so good for me to see. Because I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know how to take that kind of stuff. I’m not used to that. It just freaks me out and I look like an idiot. That way you handled it was super cool and it was fun to see that in a live version.” So that was pretty cool to see as well.

Anyway, that was the weekend, it was amazing. Now I’m sitting on a private jet and this is crazy. Only weird thing about it is if you look behind me, there’s a little toilet seat, and there’s a little curtain. Luckily I don’t have to go to the bathroom, but if I did that would be the only thing about private jets that’s not cool. There’s not a real bathroom. It’s like one of these seats you lift up the lid and there’s the potty, pooper, whatever you want to call it, the toilet, the crapper, whatever you want to call it. There’s the little curtain that you pull halfway over. And I guarantee it’d stink this place up and the pilots would kill me. I’m grateful I don’t have to go to the bathroom. Other than that, private planes are cool. Note to self, take one and make sure you go before you go.

There’s the practical advice. What’d you learn from Marketing In Your Car? I learned if you ever fly in a private plane, you go to the bathroom before you get on otherwise you stink out the pilots and they’ll hate you. Oh man.

Anyway, alright guys. Appreciate you, I can’t wait to get going with some of this stuff. Hopefully you guys got some cool lessons today like I did. Thank you Brendon, if you’re listening to this, for taking the day with me. That was the real cool thing, he was in the middle of editing his book, he still took the whole day and he was so present and relaxed and if it was me, I’d be stressed out the whole entire time.  Just coming back to he has his life structured to be able to handle this type of stuff and it was really impressive and cool to see. Anyway, I got a ton from it, hopefully you got something as well from listening in. Appreciate you all and I’ll talk to again when we get back on solid ground. Bye.

Apr 7, 2017

Do you remember the day that you became?

On this episode Russell talks about the moment he became a wrestler and how he felt and how that relates to the moment he became a marketer.

Here are some of the cool things to listen for in this episode:

  • Why Russell nearly became a basketball player instead of a wrestler and what changed his mind.
  • What the four or five things Russell believes he is down to core.
  • And why as humans, we are constantly in search of good feelings and how they shape our lives.

So listen below to hear about the moment Russell became a wrestler, and the moment he became an internet marketer.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, good morning. This is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Sorry I’m stuttering, I’m actually on the freeway right now. Normally I do these things closer to my house so it’s a little less chaotic. But this morning I had to get up early. And I didn’t get to bed last night until almost 2 o’clock. Because we got Wynter Jones is in town and a couple of other people. So I have a good excuse to pull all nights, working on funnels. So we did last night and then I had to get up this morning because we had a film shoot at 6:30 at this amazing location we found down in Nampa, Idaho. It’s kind of out in the ghetto and then you walk through the door and it’s this amazing building with stone walls, Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, it’s amazing.

A bunch of people who work for Disney, a bunch of animators in there, so it’s a bunch of super creatives….whoa, crap. I’m on the freeway, some people stopping.

Anyway, all these amazing creative people in there that are building, I don’t know, movies and animations and stuff like that, a whole bunch of Macs, and smart people. It was really, really cool. So we filmed something in the basement there for Mark Joyner when we filmed his episode for Funnel Hacker TV, which is coming soon. We filmed in the basement because it was this really creepy, nasty basement. We filmed the sales video for Mind Control Marketing there and it turned out so cool.

But I remember I was like, “Oh that upstairs was so cool. Someday I want to film in there.” So we were filming the book promo video for Expert Secrets and that’s where we decided to film it at. So that’s what we were doing this morning. We got there super early and we were trying to film before anybody woke up. And the crazy thing, I went to bed almost 2 o’clock and my alarm went off at 5:15 and I had two alarms, just in case I slept through them both. Anyway, at 5:45 I sat up and I was like, “What?” both of my alarms had turned off. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” So I had a freak out. I had to run and get ready and shower. I’m doing a juice fast this week, and luckily I didn’t have time to eat because I couldn’t eat.

But I jumped in the car and raced down here, and I was a couple of minutes late. Then the guy who I guess Brandon said that he forgot to RSVP until we were actually coming. So the dude didn’t show up. So Brandon’s calling him at 6 in the morning. Luckily one of the employees showed up early and got us in. So we got in there and started filming and…..sorry, I’m pulling off the freeway exit right now.

So we started filming and we only have like 30 minutes before their entire staff and team showed up for work. So we had to go fast. So we get everything set up, anyway, it turned out really cool. I’m excited to see what, how it all turns out. So you guys will see it soon on Expertsecrets.com, when the book is all done.

But that’s what’s happening. I’m heading back from there. I’m super tired, so I might go home and take a nap for a little bit. Because we have another long day today of amazing stuff we’re building out. Not only are we trying to get the Expert Secrets funnel done this week, we’re also trying to get Super Funnel, Exit Funnel and a whole bunch of other cool things that all tie together for the whole launch. That’s a story for another day. But that’s kind of what’s happening.

So I had a message I wanted to share with you guys today because I thought it was interesting. I recorded a video yesterday, and I don’t know about you but I, in Expert Secrets I talk about how everybody needs to build an index of stories you’re going to have. You never know when you’re going to use them and how you’re going to use them. So a lot of times this podcast is a testing ground for me to tell a story. Then I tell stories at the office and I tell stories when I speak and in a million different places. It’s funny, Brandon who has been filming me every day for the last two years, he was like, “dude that was a new story, I’ve never heard that one before.” I was like, “Really, I’ve never told that. It’s been in my inventory of stories forever.” But apparently I never told it.

So it was basically a story about the day that I became a wrestler. When I was growing up my dad was a wrestler, but I was going to be a basketball player, because that’s what short, white guys do is we become basketball players. So every day I practiced basketball, and I knew that’s what I was going to do and be. I don’t want anything else besides being a basketball player.

So that was kind of my, what I thought my future was going to be. And then my dad though, was a wrestler growing up and I guess I had wrestled for a year or two when I was, I don’t know, 5 or 6 years old. But apparently my parents said I hated it. So I dropped out of it and was never going to do it again. But then, lo and behold, in 8th grade as I’m pursuing my basketball career, it was bad because I remember Spud Webb back then, was a little short guy who was shorter than me, but he could dunk. I was like, “If Spud Webb can dunk, then I can dunk.” And I never, I got taller than Spud Webb, but I still couldn’t dunk. But that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, I thought I was going to be a basketball player, but one of my buddies two doors down from me, he went to wrestling practice and came home and started to tell my dad, “I went to wrestling practice today.” And my dad was like, “What? There’s wrestling practice here? I’m a wrestler and my son’s going to be a wrestler.”  So that was kind of what happened. Sorry, I’m driving and doing three things and I keep dropping everything. So not what I should be doing. If you guys were watching, I’d probably be getting yelled at by someone.

Anyway, so my dad was like, “We need to go to wrestling practice.” And he tried to get me to. I was like, “No, dad. I’m a basketball player. I’m not going to wrestle. Come on now. There’s no wrestling in the NBA, how am I going to do this?” Finally my dad forced me to go to wrestling because he’s like, “Nope, we’re wrestlers in this family.” I was like, “What? I don’t want to wrestle.” But he kind of made me go. That was 8th grade.

So 8th grade I did wrestling and I kind of liked it but I was like, it’s not basketball, come on now. So I just told my dad, “I’ll wrestle right now but…” and the way school worked in Utah for me, 9th grade was basically junior high and 10th grade was high school. 9th grade had started and I was like, “Well, I’ll do wrestling in 9th grade. But my sophomore year I’m going out for the basketball team because I’m a basketball player.” And he’s like, “Okay, whatever.”

So 9th grade I started wrestling and I start liking it, but not loving it. I remember my very first wrestle off, and the way wrestling works, it’s kind of cool, it’s not like the coach picks who’s going to be first tier or second tier, all that kind of stuff. You wrestle and whoever wins, wins. So they line up all the weight classes, there’s like 5 or 6 people in my weight class and then you have a wrestle off.

So you wrestle everybody else to see if you’re going to be first string, second string, third string. So there’s one dude who is really good, he was varsity, then there was a JV guy and a couple of other guys and then there was me. So we all got to wrestle and the guy who had been JV the year before, I had him in a wrestling match and I was like, I had no plans of winning. I just thought, he’s a high school kid, he’s a man for crying out loud. I’m a little kid.

Anyway, we wrestled and I beat him. And the coach is like, “Congratulations, you’re going to be JV this week.” And I’m like, “What?” and he’s like, “Yeah, you’re going to wrestle in a tournament.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” So I go home and tell my parents. I’m like, “I beat the guy in the wrestle off.” My dad’s like, “What?” and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to be wrestling this week.” And he was all excited obviously and told my mom and told, you know, everybody.

Fast forward now a couple of days, it was the wrestling tournament, we were wrestling Bingham High School. I remember we get to weigh-ins and I’m a little tiny, skinny 130 lb kid at the time. So I get on the scale and you know, you strip down to your tighty-whities and you step on the scale and look at your weight. And then the guy who I’m wrestling gets on the scale, he steps up and I look at him and the dude had a mustache. I don’t know about you, but to this day I can’t grow a mustache. I’m not still not quite manly enough to do that. He had a mustache, and again this is in high school.

I was like, “Are you kidding me? I’m a little kid. This guy in a mustache is going to destroy me.” I was so scared. So I remember after weigh-ins, we’re getting warmed up and I see my dad and I’m like, “Dad, the guy I’m wrestling has a mustache.” And my dad’s like, “What does that matter?” I’m like, “I don’t know but he’s like a real man Dad. I can’t grow a mustache.” Anyway, I go out there for this match. I go out there I’m wrestling, I’m going through the whole match, I’m wrestling this guy and I don’t remember much about the match. All I remember is at the end I won. I stood up and I shook his hands and I remember looking at him in the face and I was like, “I just beat a dude who’s got a mustache.”

And then the ref raised my hand. As soon as I raised my hand, my head went up and I look at the audience, it’s the bleachers, and in the bleachers there’s two people, my mom and my dad. My dad’s standing up clapping and that day I became a wrestler. I was like, this is the greatest feeling I have ever felt ever. I never got that from basketball, never got it from anything else. I’m a wrestler, that day I became a wrestler.

I was thinking about that. I was like, different parts of our life we identify with different things. For over a decade of my life, I was a wrestler. I still am in my mind. I identify with that, that’s who I am. At my core, there’s a few things I am, I’m a wrestler, I’m a Mormon, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, there’s a couple of things and I’m an internet marketer. There are things, four or five things I really self identify and each of those situations, I know the day that I became that person. I know the day I became a wrestler. I know the day that I became a Mormon. I know the day that I became an internet marketer. And it’s when you have that experience and you’re just like, “Dang, that feeling, I never want to lose that feeling again. That was the greatest feeling in the world for me.”

For my business, I remember when it was. I got online and I was trying all these things, you’ve probably heard my back story a million times. I was trying thing after thing after thing and all sorts of stuff and nothing was working. I remember the very first time I created something and put it out there and somebody bought it. And it was $20 and the $20 came to my Paypal account and I was like, “Dang.”

I remember coming home and telling my wife, I had a Paypal credit card at the time. We had no money in the Paypal account, but i had a Paypal credit card. Someone bought and we had $20, and for me as a college kid, $20 was insane. I came home and told Collette, “We made our first sale.” And she’s like, “What? You made a sale?” I’m like, “Yeah, someone paid us $20” and we were so excited we went out to dinner that night. And we used my Paypal credit card and paid for dinner. I mean, it wasn’t a fancy place, probably Burger King or something, that is my favorite restaurant. But we went to Burger King or something and I think we went to a dollar movie.

But it was like, I earned this. This is something, because at that point, my parents had supported me my whole life. My, I had Summer jobs, but I was wrestling all the time, so I never had a real job. Then I got married, my beautiful wife supported me. She was doing two jobs. For the first time in my life, I had created something that made money. That night, that dinner, that was mine. That was my gift to her. I created something that paid for that dinner. It paid for that movie. That night is when I became an internet marketer. I had that feeling. I love this feeling. I never want it to leave. I want that for the rest of my life.  And then I became obsessed and passionate about it.

So for you, I’m curious. I want you to think about it and hopefully it’ll be fun for you to go back and think, but what was the day, think about whatever it is your business is, the thing that you’re so passionate about giving and serving and sharing with people. What was the day that you became that person? That you became a wrestler, that you became a marketer, that you became a fitness coach, that you became whatever it is for you. What was the day that that happened? I want you to think about that, and that’s my gift for you today.

Because as I thought about it yesterday I was just like, what a cool experience. It’s just cool. I hope that this gives you a minute to remember that time for you and enjoy it. Because that feeling is what drives you now. You had that feeling once and you want it again and again and again. I want you to remember that because it was interesting, when Tony Robbins came to Funnel Hacking Live he talked about why we do things and it all came down to basically we do things, everything for humans is about a feeling. We want that feeling. We want to feel good, we want to feel loved, but it’s a feeling. That’s why we do everything.

That’s why people turn to drugs, to try to get the feeling. That’s why people turn to love, they want that feeling. That’s why people turn to all, it’s all about feelings. Sometimes we have a feeling and that’s what drives stuff, but forget about it. We don’t think about it, we don’t….just remembering that feeling of me getting my hand raised yesterday, it was, it felt good. You forget about that. We’re always racing for the next good feeling, but sometimes if you stop back and just think about the feeling you had, the day you became who you are, because that’s the feeling you’re chasing after every single day.

That’s honestly a feeling I chased for 12 years of my life while I was wrestling. That feeling of raising my hand and looking in the stands and seeing my dad, that was the feeling. That’s why I woke up super early in the morning, that’s why I stayed up late at night. That’s why I cut weight week in and week out, day in and day out for years. It’s the reason I got my eyes cut open. I had stitches, I had blood, the reason I sacrificed my body, my time, my energy, my effort, my everything, is because of that feeling. I wanted that again.

So what’s cool about us, as humans, we’ll stop and remember we can get that feeling again. So today I want you guys to sit back and I want you to remember that feeling. And that’s my gift to you. Just enjoy it for a little bit, before you go chasing it again, because it’s there and you can remember it and you can bring it back.

So I hope that helps you guys, it felt good for me today. Hopefully it felt good for you as well. And that’s all I got. I’m almost back to the office, I’m going to let you guys go. Appreciate you all, have an amazing day, and talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.

Apr 6, 2017

Let’s talk about your moral obligation…

On today’s episode Russell talks about his book, Dotcom Secrets being mentioned on another marketing podcast, but how the host says Russell’s methods may be too aggressive. He explains why it’s okay to be aggressive when you are passionate about what you’re selling.

Here are some of the awesome things you will hear on this episode:

  • How Russell’s book was mentioned in a top ten list of marketing books.
  • Why Russell feels like it’s important to be passionate about what you’re selling.
  • And also why Russell isn’t afraid to call out his competitors on what he believes is inferior software.

So listen below to find out why being aggressive is essential to selling something you truly believe in.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Alright everybody, so today I’ve actually got a Go Pro on me as well. We’re thinking about starting a behind the scenes reality TV show, showing the behind the scenes reality TV show. That’s what Funnel Hacker TV is going to be. So I’m filming a whole bunch of stuff today, and I found a really cool dude and we’re going to see if he can turn this into a cool daily video thing, showing behind the scenes and if we can, that’d be awesome. And if it doesn’t work out then this might be one episode thing. So I’m excited for it.

But I’m heading to the office today. A couple of cool things, first off, I may have ordered my own life size Batman suit. It was custom fitted and it may have showed up on Saturday and I may be trying it on today for the first time. I’m so excited. Those of you guys who are JV partners, you will see this on the Expert Secrets JV page because we’re going to be giving away a bunch of these super hero outfits, which is going to be really fun. Batman is one of the ones, and it’s the one I really wanted, so I got it. And I’m really excited about that.

I wanted to talk to you guys about something today, because it’s kind of interesting. This morning I was getting ready and listening to a bunch of podcasts and there was this one podcast that I like, and on there the episode was talking about my favorite marketing book. I was like, “Oh please, please, let my book be one there. Please, please.” They started going through their top ten marketing books and they went through and about half way through they said, the guy who is one of the hosts said, “My next book is called Dotcom Secrets, by Russell Brunson.” I was like, “YES!” so excited.

He started talking about how cool it is, the sales funnels and stuff and then he said something that I was just like, “ahh..” he said, “You know some of the stuff Russell teaches in the book is kind of aggressive, and if you don’t like those things, you can kind of tailor it for your own needs.” I kind of stopped for a second, I was like, aggressive? Are you kidding me? Oh crap. My camera just tipped over while I was driving.

But I was like, aggressive? And I was thinking, I hate that people think that what I do is aggressive. Not that I hate that they think that it’s aggressive, I hate that they think that being aggressive is bad, that’s a better way to put it. Because I was like if you, and this comes from Jay Abraham, I first heard it from him. Actually I think Matt Bacak was the first person I heard say it, but he was quoting Jay Abraham. It was basically saying that if you believe in the product or service you are selling, then you have a moral obligation to do everything in your power to get it into the hands of your customers.

I don’t know about you, but I feel that. I feel like I have a moral obligation and I try to serve people and teach people and train people who also, they’re not just trying to get rich quick on the internet, but they feel like they have a moral obligation to their audience. They’ve created some product or service or thing that they feel can change the world and when you have that, you need to be aggressive about it. Otherwise people are going to miss it. For me, I’m just like I want people missing out on all this stuff I’m sharing between Expert Secrets, Dotcom Secrets, with Clickfunnels and all that kind of stuff. I don’t want them missing it because they’re like, “Oh you sound kind of excited, but you don’t really push me over the edge.” I want to push people over the edge because I believe in it that much.

I was thinking back about my life at different eras, for things that I really believed in. And one of them, a lot of you guys know I’m a Mormon, and I went on a two year mission. I was in New Jersey, Cherry Hill New Jersey, in Morristown, Camden, all over the southern two-thirds of New Jersey. I was out there every single day knocking on doors.  I’ve had people in the past be like, “Why did you do that? Why did you push your religion on people?” I’m like, are you kidding? First off, I wasn’t pushing my religion on anyone. I was trying to share something I really, really believe in. Second off, I’m being aggressive because I believe it matters. I believe in what my message is so much that I’m willing to go out there and knock on doors, I didn’t get a penny. In fact, I paid my own way because I believe it so much.

It’s the same thing with this business. I believe in what we do so much that I’m going to be aggressive about it. I just want all of you guys that if you feel weird about being aggressive and marketing aggressively and trying to sell your product, it means you don’t believe in it enough. That’s the only logical thing that I can say. For some reason you don’t believe in your message. You need to believe in your message so much that you would literally go out and knock on doors, without getting paid a penny to go and share this with people, because that’s how much you believe in it. When you believe in your message that much, then everything else will take care of itself. You will go out there, share, talk and you’re not going to be embarrassed to go and make a video or talk about it, or do a podcast, or interview someone, or drive traffic, or lose money, risking to try and do this thing. It’s not going to matter because you’re going to care so much about your message, that all those other things just fall apart.

So I would argue that if you’re struggling in your business right now, it’s because you don’t believe in your message enough. Because you don’t believe in your message enough, you’re not being aggressive enough to share it and get people. I literally want to get people when they walk by and grab them and say, “Dude, there is a better way.”

It’s funny, people ask me, I got a lot of people who just like, “I can’t believe that you talk about your competitors like ConfusionSoft and Lowkey Pages. I can’t believe you call them out and say their names.” And I’m like, “Honestly, as an entrepreneur, I’ve used those tools in the past. It was expensive, frustrating, hard to get. I feel for those people and I want to save them from these things that are keeping them from the success they deserve.” That’s how passionate I am about, I’m not afraid to call people out because I’m like, “Look, if you’re over here, you’re going to spend twice as much money, take ten times longer, and you’re probably not going to be as successful. Where if you come with us to what we’re trying to share with you, do you understand what the difference….”

That’s how much I believe in what I’m trying to share. And until you believe that much in what you’re sharing, I think you’re going to struggle. In fact, it’s interesting, this is back probably 7 or 8 years ago. Before I knew what message I was trying to figure it out. I was selling different things, I was trying stuff. I remember, I had different programs I created. Some I was insanely passionate about. Some of you guys remember Microcontinuity, I was nuts, passionate about that. And you could hear it, and the sales were amazing because of it. I couldn’t stop talking about it. That was my life.

And then I had other products that didn’t do as well, and I remember one of my friends, Garrett Pearson, I don’t know if Garrett even remembers this or not. I can’t remember where we had this conversation but it was during the middle of some other launch after Microcontinuity and he asked, “how are sales doing?” and I was like, “They’re doing alright.” And he’s like, “I can tell.” And I’m like, “What do you mean, I can tell?” and he’s like, “I can just tell by the passion in your emails about how excited you are and I know that…” and I don’t remember the rest of what he said, but I remember him saying that. He could tell by the sound of my emails how excited I was.

And that’s how he was guessing how much sales were coming. And I was like, isn’t that weird. I’m writing an email. You can’t hear my voice, you can’t sense anything, but just when I’m really believing in something, the way I speak about it and to it, is different.  Enough that Garrett reading an email on the other side could tell how passionate I was. And obviously, a lot of other people did. Maybe not consciously, but subconsciously they recognized it and because of that, they didn’t buy the product.

So if you’re kind of thinking, “Oh yeah, my products good, it’s nice.” That’ll wear off in everything you do. It’ll wear off in your emails, in your podcasts, in your webinars, every single communication point. If you don’t believe in your product so insanely strong, it’s going to come off and sales are going to tank because of that. Even if you’re like, “I followed the script, why is no one buying?” It’s because you don’t believe in it enough to have the passion you need to get people to say yes.

So what I would say, for those that think that I’m marketing aggressively, or if you’re trying to figure out where you fit in this whole thing, you need to be obsessed with your product or service and your message. So obsessed that you are willing to go out of your comfort zone completely and share things and talk about things and that passion that some people will call aggressiveness, is what would get people to buy from you. And it’s going to rub some people the wrong way.

I hope this isn’t sacrilegious. It might be. I don’t think it is, I hope it’s not. If it is, I apologize and I repent in advance. But I was thinking about this, when you study Christ and you study his life and you read the Bible and those teachings one of the things that he says is that, and it’s the reason why Christ taught in parables. He taught in parables and people would hear the story and be like, “Okay, cool. I get it.” But then there’s so many layers in the parables that go deep. And he said, and I’m sure I’m going to mess up the quote, but he said something to the effect of, “My sheep will hear my voice and come to me.” Christ was speaking, giving his message and sharing things like that. And everyone can hear it. But his sheep, his people will come and they will actually follow him. They hear it at a different level that it affects them.

I think for all of you guys, it’s the same thing. A lot of people out there are going to be turned off, they’re not going to like it, whatever that is, but your sheep, your people will hear you and they will follow you.

It’s interesting, the other day we had a guy came to the office. Someone who I have tons of respect for. He happens to also be a speaker. He speaks at events and he gets paid to speak. And while we were sitting there, I kind of smiled and said, “Well, there’s two ways to be successful in the speaking world. Number one, you get paid to speak, you be a celebrity. For example, Tony Robbins spoke at our event. He’s a celebrity so we paid him a lot for him to speak.” I don’t think I’m allowed to say how much we paid him, but it was multiple six figures. It was a lot. I think we were doing the math and it ended up being $50,000 an hour that he was on stage, or something crazy like that. It’s a lot because he’s a celebrity.

And this guy was like, “Yeah well, I could never get paid that much.” I was like, “Yeah, neither can I.” but there’s a second way you can speak. So you speak and then you sell. Tony Robbins spent, X amount of hours on our stage and we paid him a lot for that, but three weeks later I spoke at Grant Cardone’s event and Grant did not pay to speak, he did not pay for my flights or hotel. I cover my flights, I cover my hotels. I did my own stuff. I booked my travel, for crying out loud. I get there and I stood on stage for 90 minutes, a fraction of the time. I did my presentation, sold my product and I think when all was said and done, I think when all the checks cleared it was $850,000 that we made from that presentation. I was like, “You can be famous and make blah, or you can learn how to sell. I got paid 4 times what Tony Robbins got paid.” Not because….and the only reason is because I know how to sell right.

So I share this story with this guy and if someone told me that, “Hey Russell, you made almost a million dollars in less than an hour.” I would have been like, “What? What did you do? Explain to me, give me that information. I need to know that.” I tell this guy and he’s like, “Wow, cool.” And then he changed the subject. He did not hear my message, he did not….we talked about it before. My sheep will hear my voice. Some of you guys, when I tell you that, you’re like, “Holy crap, I’ve got to learn that. I’ve got to master that skill.”

The first time I saw someone on stage and they sold and they did 100 grand in 90 minutes, I was just like I have to learn that. I don’t know what that was, but whatever it was I have to figure out that skill set. Because that is something I want to do, I need that. The same is true with your message. It’s okay to be aggressive. You’re going to turn off some people, but your sheep, your people, your whatever you want to call them, will hear your voice and follow you. And it’s the key.

So don’t be afraid of being aggressive if you truly believe in what you have. You have a moral obligation to share it with everybody in any way possible. If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, you gotta find something else to sell, or you gotta change your believe patterns. Because if you don’t believe in it, there’s no way someone’s going to give you money. Because their belief in giving you money is based on your belief in the thing you’re talking about. The more powerful your belief is, the easier it’ll be to get them to believe as well.

So that’s what you got guys. It’s okay to be aggressive, you’ve got to get them to believe. With that said, I am about to go. I’m starting my juice fast today. Stephen just showed up in his motorcycle, he’s got a backpack full of juice. Oh man. He’s got a t-shirt that says, “You’re just one funnel away.” I’m going to get some juice, and I’m going to go and get started. Because I haven’t eaten yet today, in fact I’m not eating for the next four days because I’m on a juice fast. That’s what happens when you binge all week, all spring break long. That’s what I got you guys, I’m out of here, have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon.

Apr 6, 2017

My strange encounter at the grocery store at 10:30 at night, and what that has to do with you getting more traffic into your funnels.

On today’s episode Russell talks about being recognized twice in one day while out running errands in his home town and why that makes him nervous. He also talks about the next steps he will be taking to go from $30 million a year in revenue to $100 million a year.

Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:

  • Find out the two places where Russell was recognized and how he reacted.
  • See what moves Russell is making to grow his business and why that may lead to him being recognized more often.
  • And find out how Russell plans to dominate every social media platform.

So listen below to find out why Russell needs to get used to being recognized while he’s in public.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing In Your Car. It’s actually, I’m not sure what time it is for you but it’s late night for me. I’m coming home from the grocery store. And I’ve had something interesting happen to me  twice today. I’m excited to talk about this because I’m not sure what to do with it and maybe you guys can help me. It also ties into my other, it’s a negative weight against the goals I’m going after. You guys are my therapy session for tonight. I hope that’s alright.

Okay, so the first thing is. It’s been spring break and my kids and wife and I have been having tons of fun doing stuff. We decided to get them some of those watches, have you seen those watches where you can, they can text me and I can text them, they can call me? When kids are gone, you always know where they’re at. There’s GPS on it, so any given time you know where your kids are at. You can call them, you can text them. It’s pretty awesome.

So we went and bought some of those, but they didn’t show up until today. Today we went to go get them from the store. We’re in there getting them all pre programmed, everything working and then I’m sitting there. And what’s funny is my wife, she has something happening this morning, so she got dressed up, she looked gorgeous. But me and the kids, the kids were all in their jammies, I was in my sweats. My hair’s all over the place and I’m just like, I told my wife, “I’m so sorry. We’re going to embarrass you going out today, but I don’t want to get ready.” So she looked gorgeous and we all looked like, we just got out of bed, because we kind of did.

So we’re at the store getting everything put together, but it doesn’t matter because I’m at the Verizon store, so who really cares. So I get stuff all checked out and all the sudden one of the workers there says, “Russell Brunson.” I’m like, “Yeah?” I assumed he was reading something off of whatever. He’s like, “How did you build such a big following?” I just froze. I didn’t even know what to say. I’m like, “Um…a lot of hard work.” And he’s like, “Didn’t you just write a book or something?” and I’m like, “Yeah, I wrote a book and I have another book coming out next month.” I didn’t know what to say. It was the most awkward thing. I was like, you know that scene in Dumb and Dumber where he comes out and says, “Hey Big Gulps huh. Alright, well….See you guys later.” That’s what it felt like.

I didn’t know what to say, I was so out of my element. It was just awkward. I felt bad because I was like, a horrible host or I don’t know what exactly it’s called. It was just kind of, I felt bad. And when I got in the car with my wife she’s like, “Why didn’t you talk to him more.” I’m like, “I don’t know. I could’ve, I should’ve.” It totally just caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to say. I felt bad, I hope that……I always want to be nice to people. I’m sure he’s like, “That Russell dude is weird. He seems really nice on his podcast and stuff, but he’s weird in real life.”

And then tonight, so it’s like, 10:30 at night and I’m at the grocery store listening to podcasts, I’m in my, once again, my sweats. I’m walking around getting stuff, doing my thing, listening to podcasts, having a good time, taking my sweet time at the grocery store because it’s kind of fun on late nights and no one’s around. I’m doing that and start checking out, so I take my headphones out because in case this cash register person wants to talk to me. I’m putting stuff on the belt thing and as I’m doing that, all the sudden I look back and there’s a guy standing behind me. He’s like, “Hey, is there a Ferrari in the parking lot?” I was like, “I don’t know, maybe.”

Then someone grabbed him, “The lane over here is open.” And he left. I was like, Okay, that guys must, I assume he knows who I am. Because I used to have a Ferrari, it was kind of awkward. It was kind of like, once again I was like, I didn’t know what to say.  “Maybe….ugh.” I’m sure I sounded so stupid.

It’s funny because in the past no one ever knew who I was, which is nice. In fact, in Boise I never advertized hardly here because I didn’t want anyone to know. Because it’s kind of nice to have some normal life. And then it’s been funny, every once in a while, maybe twice in my life, I’ll be in the airport and someone will be like, “Russell Brunson!” and it’s kind of cool because someone recognizes me in the airport, how cool is that? But now it’s happening more often in my own home town. It freaks me out a little bit.

So why does that freak me out. I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of flattered by it, it strokes my significance and I like those kind of things, but it’s also like I don’t want to be on. I still like going home and not being on. I’ve been in the grocery store twice today in my sweats. I don’t like being on so it makes me nervous, I have a lot of fear about that.

It’s funny because this year the book’s coming out and the book is like mass market. I think it’s going to do well, hopefully. And we’re going to try to do an infomercial with it and if we do that it’s going to be on TV, we’re doing radio ads, so it’s going to be on the radio. It’s going to be out there. And then Clickfunnels is continuing to grow and there’s a lot of cool stuff happening and I’m trying to get me and the message and all that stuff out there, but then I had this nervousness of the more I’m out there the more people might know who I am, which I guess is okay, but I don’t know. It adds another layer of what makes me nervous and all that kind of stuff.

With that said, I’m going to tell you what was really fun about today. A couple of things, first off, it’s general conference. So for the Mormons out there, you know what it is. For those who aren’t, twice a year we have what we call General Conference, it’s two days. Saturday and Sunday where basically the leaders of our church, the prophet, the 12 apostles, a bunch of people all speak. We get donuts and we sit at home with the TV and watch church on TV with the kids. It’s pretty fun. That was today, Saturday and then tomorrow we have that again.

So after the conference, I went to Best Buy and I bought a blogging camera, I bought some other stuff. And basically I’ve been thinking a lot about this, one of my things I’ve been digging and drilling deep in the Inner Circle members this session has been diversity. I’ve been around now for 14 years, and I know, I remember what happened when I got slapped by Google, a lot of times, paid, then free, then free, then free, I got slapped a ton. Facebook got slapped a year and a half ago, and luckily we got through it. Facebooks been really good.

In fact, I feel like we penetrated Facebook. We kind of were all over it. I’m sure that if you ever have been on one of my pages, you see my face every day and I apologize I’m not better looking because you have to see my ads all the time. But we’re pretty much dominating Facebook, we’re everywhere. It’s fun and we’re having great success with it and it’ll continue to grow. But we’re doing really, really well there. But I hate putting all my eggs in Zuckerburg’s basket. So we do a lot of other stuff. Like Dream 100 and we have partners, so we’re growing there. But I’m also looking at what are the other core platforms, because we’re not doing great in the other platforms and I want to go deep into each of them.

I tried Snapchat for a little bit, I was pretty consistent with it too, but we just can’t. …Snapchat is hard to grow. I think I’m moving off Snapchat, so I’ve decided to give up on that platform. But I’m really excited about Instagram. Instagram is cool because it’s actually better than Snapchat, plus, easier to grow an audience. I started doing Instagram whatever it’s called, Instagram lives this week. And I already get more viewers on Instagram live than I did on Snapchat. I’m like, crap I should’ve been doing this for the last year.

So that’s been kind of a cool thing. So I had a chance to meet a dude who’s the number one guy in my industry in Instagram. He’s got a huge 3 million person following. So I’m friends with him and we’re paying him to help us grow ours and promote us. So I’m trying to go deep into that channel. So I want to just, again, it’s all diversity in platforms and channel and people. So I’m trying to go really deep into Instagram. Then my next big play is Youtube. We’ve never had an awesome YouTube and I want to own it.

So we’re launching, some of you may know if you’ve been listening to the podcast, Funnel Hacker TV, which is going to be all on YouTube, obviously on Facebook and other places, but I want to force the audience to go to YouTube to consume and grow it. So we have a lot of cool stuff happening in YouTube right now, but it’s just not growing that big. But I think Funnel Hacker TV will be because it’s actually a TV show that’s going to be awesome.

But then with that I want to, we have 10 episodes that we’ve recorded that are being edited and are mostly done. When the book launch ends, so are we six weeks away, well book launch is two weeks away, so six weeks away from launching Funnel Hacker TV. Funnel Hacker TV episode one will launch as soon as the book launch is over. And then basically once a week one will be coming out. So those will be really cool. But to stimulate those, because those take a lot of energy and effort to do it. I’m starting a Funnel Hacker TV behind the scenes, which is basically going to be me doing a daily vlog. Casey Neistat style. Yes, I have been watching a lot of Casey Neistat, I’ve been geeking out on him, he’s really cool and I like him a lot and I like what he’s doing. I may be trying to get him to speak at Funnel Hacking Live, which would be cool. So lately I’ve been watching him and I was like, “I want to do that.”

He’s awesome, he has all his own camera’s, videos himself, and edits it all and I don’t have any skills like that. So I found a guy in our community who is posting in our Facebook group. We have like 50 people asking to help edit videos, but there’s one guy that for some reason I really just liked him a lot. So he’s doing the first test when we’re starting next week. Basically I’m going to be video blogging this whole behind the scenes thing and then each day he’s going to take all the footage and dump it all in a drop box the next day and take it and try to make a video blog, Casey Neistat style, and it’s going to be living on YouTube and that’ll be kind of its home. It’ll be what, I don’t know if it’s the right word, but it’s going to help boister up the funnel hacking show. My goal is to go deep into YouTube and dominate and to own it and just figure that out.

So we’re going to be hiring all the best YouTube people in the world to get to understand it and know and spending a lot of money and energy and effort. So we can dominate that platform so that it’s a big platform as we have on Facebook. We’ll have the same thing on Youtube, the same thing on Instagram. Just keep going to the core of the platforms that our people are at. Same thing I want to master TV, I want to master radio and potentially direct my own magazines too.

So if you look at me, that’s my, in fact, I wish all you guys were in Inner Circle, if you were all in my Inner Circle, this would be so much easier, I could show you all how to step deeper. But at Inner Circle meeting I was showing people, my first 8 or 9 years of my business was all about creating offers and we’d jump from offer to offer to offer. We got stuck at 3 million bucks a year. And then as we figured out which offer was our best, which was Clickfunnels, then we shifted into instead of creating a bunch of offers, we kept one offer but then we created, I used my creativity on different front end offers to get people into Clickfunnels. My webinar, my books, all these things are creative things we’ve created to get people into the one thing we’re trying to sell, which is Clickfunnelsl.

So there’s little nuances, when I go from zero to 3 million dollars, I got stuck there for 5 or 6 years we couldn’t break past that. I was focusing my creativity on lots of new offers. When I shifted my creativity from instead of creating a bunch of offers to how can I sell more people into one offer? That’s when I went from 3 million to 30 million. And my goal to go from 30 to100, shift my creativity from different offers to mastering traffic. So my creativity is going to be focusing for the next year to two years on traffic. Does that make sense?

So in my early life it was like every month we’re launching Neurocel is our supplement. Our thing in the weight loss market, Body Evolution. Then we’ve got the thing with dating market. Then we got this thing in the couponing market, and every month was rolling out our new offer. Again, that’s where we got stuck at that level. And then when we focused everything on one offer, Clickfunnels, first it was the webinar, promote that. If you listen to the podcast, every single week for an entire year, nothing but the podcast, then we added the book funnel in there. Excuse me, the webinar and the book funnel both pushing into that. Now I got the next book, the perfect webinar script, a bunch of front ends that all lead to the thing that’s all we’re really focusing on selling, Clickfunnels.

When we focus on one singular thing, it went from 3 to 30, then we go from 30 to 100, I think we’ve got enough front end offers, I don’t want to create anything new. I just want to focus on creativity within traffic. What are all the ways we can get traffic into it? So it’s mastering all these other platforms and getting creative and figure out how we can be the best in Instagram, the best on TV, the best… and really spending the effort and energy to do that, and that’s really how we’ll scale to the next level.

So anyway, as I was showing the Inner Circle members, this is a million dollars businesses, creating different offers figuring out what people like. You go from a million to 10, to 20 it’s like, now you figured out what people like. Now focus on things, front end funnels to get people into that offer and then going from 10 million to 100 million is now focusing on creativity in the traffic.

So for me it’s like that. But the thing that sucks though is for me to go and do that and get them more traffic, what do I gotta do? I gotta put my face out there and then what happens? Its 10:30 at night and people are asking me if I have a Ferrari while I’m checking out at the grocery store. That’s my fear. So there’s the conundrum. But it’s all good problems to have.

Anyway, I just more wanted to catch up with you guys because that was funny. But a lot of times we have a goal that’s pushing us one direction, but then we’ve got our fear of something else pulling us the other way and it keeps us in the middle, and I just don’t want that to happen to me. I thought if I confessed it on a live podcast, I guess it’s live right now but it’s not live when you listen to it. If I confessed it on the Marketing In Your Car podcast then I gotta forsake it. I don’t know. I don’t know how that all works.

Alright guys, I’m done. Take the groceries in and get to bed. We’ve got a long day tomorrow watching conference in our jammies, eating donuts. It’s going to be amazing. Then Monday is when I have to repent of my sins. Monday I’m doing a week long juice fast because I’ve eaten enough carbs in the last 48 hours to basically be all next week and the week on. So I’m going to jump back into normal life mode. Plus I’m going to be vlogging, which is fun.  One of the cool things about vlogging, is that it makes my life not boring.

Which is what is kind of fun about Snapchat or Instagram. It forced you to realize if your life is boring or not. It’s documenting all these things throughout the day. And if I don’t do anything, it’s going to be a really boring show. The next four days is actually insane. I may or may not have purchased a full custom fit batman suit that may or may not have showed up yesterday. So that’s going to be on episode number one. Because I gotta open it, reaveal and show JV videos behind it and a bunch of other stuff. That’s insanely cool.

Then we’ve got a whole bunch of other things. Anyway, you have to watch episode one, if and when it ever gets done. So anyway, that’s the plan, but it’s going to be fun. So I will share you guys a journey of what we’re doing to dominate all the platforms and if you were at Funnel Hacking Live, we sold a course called Fill Your Funnel that will eventually be at Fillyourfunnel.com, but the live training actually starts on Monday, which is kind of cool. But we’re taking people through this journey with us over the next year, how do we scale traffic. It’s going to be kind of fun. So we’ll probably open up registration for it in a couple of weeks, if you guys are interested. Go to fillyourfunnel.com get on a waiting list and you can get your funnel filled with prospects who want to give you money. That is my focus at least for the next 12 months and probably on.

With that said, appreciate you all, have a nice day. Have a nice night and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.

Mar 31, 2017

Until you’ve come completely okay with failing, it’s going to be really hard to succeed.

On today’s episode Russell talks about how people are scared to take a risk because of the personal responsibility if they fail.

Here are some of the interesting things you will hear in this episode:

  • The biggest reason people are afraid to take risks and why it’s so scary.
  • How Russell’s mission for the Mormon church helped prepare him to cope with rejection and failure.
  • And why we shouldn’t be afraid of people seeing us fail because people only pay attention to themselves.

So listen below to find out why you shouldn’t be afraid to take some risks with your business.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, welcome back to Marketing In Your Car. It’s a rainy, rainy day here in Boise. It’s like a monsoon outside, it’s kind of fun. But it’s still spring break so I’m going to go get some stuff done for the next three hours and then I’m coming back to go roller skating with the kids. And our kids have never been roller skating before, so it’s going to be kind of a big deal and really hard, I’m sure. But it’ll be fun.

So I wanted to share with you guys today, something, a kind of cool interesting thing. I had my call with Tara a couple of days ago and on there we were talking about some of the things that make people successful and unsuccessful. There’s a lot that goes into it, but one of the things was really kind of interesting and fascinating, as we were talking about it. It is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t have success, and it has to do with….can you guys guess? Drum roll please…..

The personal risk involved. It wasn’t just risk, because there’s risk in everything. “What if I lose all my money?” there’s always a risk of whatever you’re going to try, but it’s a personal risk. How will I personally cope with this if I fail? What’s going to happen to me as a human being? What are people going to think about me? That’ll be the worst thing in the world. It’s interesting because, maybe it’s because most of you all know at this point, hopefully, that I am Mormon. So I spent two years on a mission. I was in New Jersey, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and a lot of people telling me no. A lot of people yelling at me, a lot of people cursing me out in their native New Jersey tongue and it was fun.

It was scary at first though, not going to lie. I remember my very first day on the mission, I went out there with my companion and we started knocking on doors and I always assumed I was going to watch him knock for three or four weeks, then when I was ready I would go and do it. But that was not the case. The very first door he knocked on. He did his little thing, and the next door he knocked on the door and said, “You’re up.” And then stepped back.

I was like, “What? No.” So I’m like, all nervous so I say, “Hey my name is…” and I’m totally stuttering through this thing and about half way through, it was this cute little old lady who’d answered. I was like, she’s going to be so nice, we’re going to teach her and it’s going to be so great. Then boom, she slammed the door in the middle of my thing. Mid sentence, mid word probably. I’m like, “Huh, well that’s awkward.” And I remember at that time, I turned around in the driveway and we were walking back out and there were these cars driving by, and they started honking. And I was like, “Oh.” Because you guys remember, I grew up in Utah,  there’s always people when missionaries drive by, you honk and wave, “Oh it’s the missionaries.”

So I hear this honking and I’m like, “Oh cool. I’m a missionary now. This is so cool. They’re going to wave at me.” So I look back and these guys are waving at me, but not in the same way that I was used to do when I saw missionaries. They were honking and they were sticking their heads out the car and flipping me off,  and like “Go back to Utah!” I was like, “Oh man, these people hate us.” And at first it was really, really hard. But then, we knocked on more doors and more doors and eventually, thousands and thousands of doors, I stopped, I was so ashamed of myself with rejection. They’re not rejecting me, they’re rejecting something else, whatever, it’s all cool. And I was fine with it.

It’s interesting, if you look at, this is a side note for those who wonder. If you look at network marketing, or door to door sales, you notice one common theme. 90% of all the network marketing companies are founded in Utah, and 90% of all direct, door to door, like Cutco knives, alarm systems pest control, they’re all founded out of where? Utah. The reason why is because they have all these Mormon missionaries who have spend their whole life knocking on doors for 2 years and getting rejected. They have forgone, they no longer care, they don’t have this personal fear of rejection. So they’re able to do those things.

So I think maybe I’m kind of lucky because I have that so many times, being rejected, that I don’t really fear that much anymore. That’s what keeps a lot of people back. Just that fear of “What are people going to think if I try this and I don’t succeed?” All the personal risk of putting you out on the line. It’s scary.

It’s not so much the financial, I think sometimes we hide behind the financial. “Is it going to make sense? Or not make sense?” In fact, it was funny at Grant Cardone’s event, after we came back off the stage and I was in the back and he was all excited about the presentation and everything. And then he was like, “I’m going to get out there and tell everyone to buy. If they don’t have money, they should buy anyway, if you’re already broke, what’s an extra $1000 on your credit card. It doesn’t matter, just buy it.” I was like, at first kind of laughed, and I’m sure that’s one of his closing techniques. But I was like, it’s so true. If you’re already in debt, what’s an extra thousand bucks. But it’s the personal risk of what if I try this and fail. That’s the real fear. It’s not like, “My credit cards are almost maxed out.” Who cares? That doesn’t really matter when all is said and done.

It’s that personal risk of “What if I try this and it doesn’t work. I tried all these other things and it didn’t work.” In fact, I think that I have a lot of friends and family members who have gone through a lot of school. They keep going to school and they’ve got their bachelors and their masters and they keep going on and on and on. I think part of it is they like learning, but they’re so scared of jumping in and trying that they never do it, right.

Being an entrepreneur is less about learning in a formal setting. Formal setting’s is the safe happy place. Nothing could possibly go wrong. You study and learn and you take a test and fail or pass or whatever. But there’s no personal risk ever. So people stay in there forever. Being an entrepreneur is the opposite. You’re out there with no shield, no breastplate, no nothing. You’re running out and people are shooting arrows at you like crazy. And if you’re so scared of personal risk, you’re not going to be willing to run out there. You’re in trouble because it’s tough. Honestly.

It’s funny, the problems you have when you’re small versus the problems you have when you’re big. I remember being smaller and trying to figure out how to make more sells. Now we’re so big, it’s like how do we slow sales so we can keep up with customer support and the technology. There’s a whole new set of issues that come. But every single day there’s something. I remember I heard, I think Dan Kennedy said, once every month and entrepreneur faces a decision that either bankrupts their business or takes it to the next level. And that was back, direct mail days, radio, or TV. Stuff like that. Now days, I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a daily thing. Every day it’s like, alright. Put it back on. What’s the choice?

And I take personal responsibility. This is my choice, I think it’s going to work, I don’t know but let’s just go. Boom, we take it and we go and we go and we go. And I think instinctively you get better, but I make a lot of mistakes still. But instinctively get better and better at it. It’s interesting, in some of my coaching programs, one of the biggest things that people, I let everyone in my Inner Circle vox me. What’s interesting, most of the voxers that I get are people telling me, “this is what I want to do. Do you agree with that?”

It’s interesting because what they’re looking for is confirmation and again, there’s nothing wrong with this, I’m just explaining it. It’s interesting as I watch it. What they’re looking for is somebody else to hand the personal responsibility to if it fails. They want to be able to say, “Russell said this and so if it goes wrong, Russell told me this.” As opposed to “This is my business, my life, I’m going to try it out.” I’m okay with that. I don’t mind it. In fact, it’s what keeps me sharp, keeps me going. It’s really, really fun. I enjoy it. So I’m not saying it’s negative, I’m saying it’s interesting that that’s what most of the questions are that come to me.

It’s more like, they know the answer, they just want to be able to get me to approve it so that way if it goes wrong they’ve got somebody besides themselves to place the personal responsibility on. And it’s just fascinating to me. Even at the higher levels, there’s still that fear of personal responsibility. The personal risk. Those things that go into it. So I don’t know the right answer to that other than you should all get door to door sales jobs, or become Mormon missionaries and go get rejected for two years. I know for a lot of you guys, that’s not the right answer. But it’s becoming okay with that and realizing what’s the worst case scenario? If I try this thing and it fails, does anyone really know.

It’s like the credit card thing. An extra thousand dollars on your credit card. Does it really matter? Does anyone really know that even exists besides me and maybe my spouse?  That’s, again, I don’t know the right answers to that, but it’s becoming okay with that personal risk, because you have to do that or else it’s going to be really hard to jump. Otherwise you’re going to be stuck in this learning mode. People always tell me  they have information overload, what I’ve found with pretty much all of them, it’s because they’re scared, so scared of the personal risk involved. They like the safety of learning so they study and they learn and they study and they learn and then they don’t do because they’ve learned so much that the information overload is the way to take personal risk off of them. “I’ve got so much stuff from all these people. I don’t even know what to do.” So they claim information overload and it gets them frozen in the spot. So they keep learning, “I gotta learn through this information overload.” And they’re just stuck in a safe place that the school system screwed us up, giving us.

And I think you gotta get out of that. You gotta get out of the learning and that concept and just jump. Just running and jumping. So for you, and I’m talking to you, who’s listening to this. Not everybody listening, just to you. You’ve gotta be okay with that. If you fail, it’s not that big of a deal. Nobody else even knows it’s happening besides you. That’s what you gotta understand. We all think everyone is looking at us, the problem and the reality, is that everybody is looking at themselves. We’re all self conscious. I’m as guilty as everyone else. We’re all self conscious of ourselves.

So we dress the way we do, and we do our hair. We do all these things because we’re so self conscious and we don’t want everyone else to think something about us. But the reality is everyone’s doing that. Everyone’s looking at themselves, nobody is looking at you. So when you understand that, I hope that gives you permission. Nobody’s actually looking at me. Nobody really cares. I have people come up to me and they’re like, they start confessing all their failures to me and I’m like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they have all these things.

In fact, it was interesting I was at Boise State was wrestling UVU and the head coach at UVU was my old high school Greco freestyle coach. One of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him like no one else.  So we’re at the tournament and Boise State beats UVU. After the match I run down and I’m so excited to see him. I’m like, “Greg, how’s it going?” and he looks and he’s like, “Well you saw how bad it was.” He just starts kind of justifying why they lost. I was just kind of smiling. I was like, “I didn’t even watch the match. My kids were running around like crazy. I didn’t even see the score. I’m just excited to see you.” And he was like embarrassed they lost and trying to shift that personal risk on, “Here’s the reasons why we lost.” Trying to justify. I’m like, I just wanted to see you. I don’t even care. I couldn’t have cared less who won. I was just excited to see you.

And ij think that’s what we all gotta understand. Nobody else really cares about you and what’s happening that much. It’s all you and you’re putting this stress and pressure and all those things on you. If you take that off a little bit then you’re okay. If I risk and if I fail, what’s the worst case scenario? Who cares? No one really is looking that close. It’s you. It’s you becoming okay with you. Because that’s a big part of it too. You’ve got to become okay with you. It’s interesting, the personal risk and responsibility is more like you becoming okay with yourself. Because nobody else really cares.

Anyway, I don’t know if that helps or not, but I hope it does. This rain outside is now shifting to snow. It’s crazy. The weather is insane. Everything is turning green here in Boise between the cold winter and the long snow in the winter and then this. Kind of fun. Alright you guys I’m going to go in and get stuff done before I go roller skating. Appreciate you all, I hope you have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon.

Mar 28, 2017

What I learned this weekend while playing both Mom and Dad.

On today’s episode Russell talks about the difference between masculine and feminine energy. He shares what he learned from Tony Robbins about what causes all relationships to fail.

Here are some interesting things in this episode:

  • What the difference between masculine and feminine energies are.
  • How a woman can cause a man to lose his masculinity, which cause the deterioration of the relationship.
  • And what Russell is doing to combat his constant need to produce instead of just being present with his family.

So listen below to find out how learning about masculine energy versus feminine energy helped save Russell’s marriage.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, good morning. This is Russell once again, you probably know that at this point. But welcome to Marketing In Your Car, I hope it’s been good. It is officially spring break here in Boise, which means the weather is nice, the kids are out of school, we’re wearing shorts. The last time the kids were out of school we had our two weeks of snow days, like two months ago. So it’s nice to be on the other side. It’s been so fun, we had a chance to go swimming with them, and playing and movies.

What I want to talk to you guys about is my struggle. I’m curious, my guess is if you’re an entrepreneur, you might have this struggle as well. It’s really hard to just be. I don’t know if that makes sense or not. Just to be present in one spot and I’m thinking a lot about this over the last day or two. My wife was at the Tony Robbins event last week, so I was, we had four days of Inner Circle, she left during the fourth day. After that, we have a helper who helps Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday was all me and the kids, and I loved it.

But it’s hard. I mean it’s hard work, yes. It makes you love and respect and appreciate your wife a million times more, when you get to be the mom and the dad. But more so than that, I think it’s just different. Because I work really, really, really hard, probably too much. If you ask any of my people in my world, but I love it.
I think it’s, there’s two types of work. There’s directional and then there’s circular….I don’t know if that makes sense. I’ve been kind of geeking out a lot lately on masculine and feminine energy and things like that as well. In fact, if you go to Tony Robbins Date with Destiny, he has a whole day on relationships, it’s fascinating. Basically, it’s funny, no matter what problems you’re having in your relationship, if you go to regular counseling they try to fix the symptom of it.

They’re like, “you need to talk better.” Or whatever those things are right? That’s what they’re touching on. The foundational breakdown of every relationship is actually the loss of the polarity between masculine and feminine. So Tony’s whole thing is don’t fix the symptom, come back to the issue. What happens is men start becoming women and women start becoming men. As soon as the polarity for masculine and feminine dies, the whole relationship falls apart.

It’s really fascinating. That’s why in every relationship that’s successful there’s a masculine and a feminine. Sometimes it’s the females’ more masculine, sometimes the male is more feminine. It’s interesting, if you look at it. It’s such a not marketing topic, but it still gets me excited.

If you look at, I’ve got friends who the man is more feminine and their wives are more masculine. Almost always there’s this thing where the polarity between the two has to match, and that what causes connection. So Tony’s whole thing is you fix that, you fix some of the masculine and feminine, because what happens….alright, we’re going to go on a longer tangent I think, because I’m getting excited.

So what happens in a relationship is you get married and there’s a masculine and a feminine, and again, I don’t even care. I’m not going to get political or non political, but in all relationships. From… I don’t even know the politically correct way to say it. I’m not going to go into that part. We’ll leave that there for your imagination. Any relationship, masculine and feminine.

Let’s say you get married and at first the man’s very manly, and the woman is very womanly, and everything goes good. And then what happens, if you look at how masculine energy works, and how feminine energy works, the way that feminine energy causes change is through criticize, so women will criticize them to try to get them to change, it’s just kind of a thing that happens. Believe it or not, it just happens to be that.

What happens at first, the first year or two, or five, or seven years of marriage, the man has the masculine energy and that doesn’t bother him and they’re fine, but after a while it breaks down the masculine energy and the sudden as soon as the man stops, the criticism keeps happening and then all the sudden there’s a point where all the sudden it breaks men down and then they break from being masculine energy and absorbing those things to hurts their feelings and then all the sudden they switch to feminine energy.

And as soon as they do that, that’s the deterioration of the relationship. Everything bad happens after that. As soon as the man, the masculine becomes feminine, then women lose their attraction to the man and then the women end up becoming more masculine because they have to step up for the man. All this stuff happens and it all breaks apart. Tony’s whole thing is it shows you when a man becomes a man again, boom, instantly the masculine and feminine polarity comes back together and the magnetism happens there and all the other problems fall away. Really fascinating.

I learned that at a time when my wife and I were really struggling, and I realized at the time I had become very feminine. I still struggle with that part of my life, to be completely honest. When I’m at work, I’m very masculine and when I’m not sometimes I slip into my feminine, but any of the issues we have, it’s weird how I can tie it back to me switching into my feminine. Anyway, it’s really weird.

Why did I bring up this? Oh yeah, so as I’m thinking about masculine and feminine trying to understand. What is masculine? What is feminine? Really understanding those things, masculine energy is more moving towards something, there’s my goal. I need to go hunting and kill and go get that thing. Whereas feminine energy is more circular, if that makes sense.

I remember the first time I kind of got this, was with my wife 5 or 6 years ago. I was home with the kids on a long weekend and I was struggling with it all day long. Stressing out and she’s like, “What’s the matter?” I’m like, “I don’t know. We’re just sitting here playing games. The same game over and over again. Then we’re doing this, there’s no point to any of this. We’re just here.” And she told me, “That’s the point.”

When I got that, I was like, huh. I was able to stop trying to get somewhere and sit back, I don’t know if this goes against what I talked about earlier. It’s more the feminine energy being able to be, and be present and stuff like that. It’s fascinating. What’s interesting is as I was with my kids this weekend I was noticing my feelings. Why do I feel…..I’m having so much fun, but I feel things.

I think what I was feeling, as I was trying to identify it, I’m used to going, here’s the thing. Go hunting, kill, get that thing and come back. I’m running, and I’m so comfortable in that zone or that whatever, that I’m able to do that. But then when it’s just being, being present and just be with the kids, it’s really, really hard. Really hard for me. I don’t know if you guys feel that as well. It’s just not natural to me.

So this weekend was really kind of fun because I was trying to do that. I try to be present and try to be there. And it’s this insane mind game with my mind coming back to “No, go produce.” No, I need to be present. This is where I am. The back and forth between that was fascinating in my head. To watch my struggle constantly. So this week it’s spring break week. I’m trying to figure out how to get more balance in my life. I don’t know about you guys, but I think a lot of us struggle with that.

So I’ve been looking at that. Okay, how do I this week with my kids, how do I do that? How do I be present and also have a producing thing in me that I need to be able to do that thing? So today, for example, I woke up really early at 6 and I had a call with Tara, and I had a bunch of projects. I spent two hours and produced. And when it was done I unchecked, and I looked at my clock. Okay, right now it’s 7:30 or whatever. Til 10:30 I’m going to go and just be. There’s no point and that’s the point.

So I went out with the kids and I had a good time. We just hung out. It wasn’t stressful because I knew at 10:30 I was going to jump in the car and come and produce. So basically, this is where I’m at now. I’m driving to the office. Well, I’m at the office, in the parking lot waiting. But now I’m going to go produce. I’m trying to make it finite. So it’s not producing for forever. I’m going from now until I think 4:00, I have a dentist appointment. So I’m going to produce til 4:00, I have one big project to get done and when it’s done, the rest of the night I have to be done. I’m going to go home and me and some of the kids will watch some Lord of the Rings, and we’re just going to go and be present. Not produce, which is going to be hard.

But I did the same thing yesterday and it was really cool. Except for right before we started watching the movie, I had all this stress and things I was trying to figure out. I was like, I could create this thing while I’m watching a movie with the kids. And then I was just like, no I’m going to be present and I’ll worry about it tomorrow. As soon as I was able to turn that off and say okay, I’m not a producer right now, from this point to this point. I’m just going to be and that’s the whole point. I can do it.

And I did and it was awesome and I had such a good time with them. So anyway, I don’t know if this helps you at all, but in my mind it’s, at least the last two days have been really cool. I’m excited to test it out this whole week. I hope I can keep rolling with it, because it gave me so much more good times with my kids and my wife. And it wasn’t uncomfortable because I was segmenting that. So for me, like I said, I’m going to start chunking my days, this is my time to be a producer and this is my time to be, and be okay with that. And when I’m trying to just be present and be here I’m going to not try to produce. I’m going to forget about production and moving forward and going after a goal.

Because the goal is just to be there. Anyway, I hope that helps some of you guys. It’s helping me to overcome my entrepreneurial issues.  Anyway, hopefully one of you guys out there heard that and it helps you as well. So with that said, I’m going to go produce. I’m going to go hunt something, kill it, and bring it back home. I’m excited for it. It’s going to be exciting. Thanks so much for everything guys and I’ll talk to you soon.

Mar 24, 2017

Behind the scenes of one of the most amazing Inner Circle meetings ever…

On today’s episode Russell recaps some of the cool stuff from the last four days of Inner Circle meetings. He also shares his insights on a TV show he loves and talks about his new Batman suit.

Here are some cool things you should listen for in this episode:

  • The new rule that will be enforced within the Inner Circle.
  • Why they came up with this rule in the first place and why it will help Russell to go deeper into his teachings.
  • And hear Russell’s crossover prediction with one of his favorite TV shows.

So listen below to find out some insider stuff from Russell’s Inner Circle.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell and this is a late night Marketing In Your Car, I hope you don’t mind. I’m actually just about to start watching 24, before I do I wanted to kind of reflect on the last 4 days and share some cool stuff with you guys.

We had our Inner Circle group here in Boise. We had 2 Inner Circle groups. One group on Monday and Tuesday, and a second group on Wednesday, Thursday. It’s the first Inner Circle at the new office, which was so insane. Because that was the whole reason I moved into this new office, if I’m completely honest. It’s because I wanted to have a room to do Inner Circle meetings in. A year and a half ago, almost 2 years ago, I went to Joe Polish’s Genius Network Event at his office. We were in his office and we walked up the stairs into this room, it was layed in a way where you could have a lot of people in it. As soon as I saw the room, I was like I want this.

I took a bunch of pictures of it and then went home and messaged our realtor and said we wanted a place and we started looking around and all the sudden I remembered this place we looked at before. I didn’t like the office before because it was layed out really weird, but I was like if we gutted the whole thing and rebuilt it, we could do this. So we put the offer in and now a year and a half later we’re in and we just did our first Inner Circle meeting, which is so cool.

So there’s lesson number one. When you see it, then you gotta go and get it. Which actually reminds me of one of my favorite stories, it was a story I’ll probably mess up the details. I think it was at the grand opening of Disney World, and they were there opening day and the news and the reporters and everyone’s there. And they’re opening up Disney World and at the time, Walt Disney had passed away and one of the reporters standing next to Roy Disney, who was Walt’s brother. He looked at Roy and said, “Hey, it’s a shame that Walt didn’t live to see this.” And Roy looked back at the reporter, he said, “No, you don’t understand. Because Walt saw this, that’s why we’re here today.”

It’s such a cool thing, so many of us have a vision of what we want and we don’t get it. Anyway, I hope that’s inspiring. I saw it, and I didn’t think about it. We had got it, and now it’s here and it’s insane.  I think it was cool and it was fun having our own room because we can control the energy and the music and the motion.

Thanks to Garret White, he came to one of our last Inner Circle meetings at our hotel room. They used to be in hotel rooms and he kind of shifted how we do the format of stuff, which has added a whole other level of energy to it.

It’s crazy, in Inner Circle, there’s a hundred people in it. But we broke it down into four groups, 25 in each group. So we had 25 that came Monday, Tuesday. 25 came Wednesday, Thursday. And then in April we’ve got two more groups that come through.  It’s funny because April groups are packed. We had to shut those groups down because we had so many people. These groups are smaller and I get super nervous during smaller ones. Because I’m like, “They’re not going to meet as many cool people.” And all these things, but it seems like the smaller groups almost are better sometimes. Because the smaller the more intimate, we get a lot more done.

The two groups, I wish ….first off, I can’t even believe that I get paid to be in that room with these entrepreneurs and people that legitimately are changing the world in so many different areas and have so many unique ideas and things that I would never think of or fathom. To be able to sit there, honestly for four days just have a chance to absorb their ideas and mindset. Watching these people and we have companies from smaller companies doing whatever, up to, one of the guys in our group is the main marketing guy for the Truth About Cancer, they did a launch, did 20 million dollars. They’re about to do a launch, and my guess, this new launch they’re putting out called the Truth About Vaccines, and they’ll probably do 50-60 million dollars.

Then there’s people in the software space and people in the….it’s so unique. I’ve been to other mastermind groups but it’s like everyone’s in the same industry so it’s hard to glean much because everyone’s trying to do the same thing. It’s so diverse. It’s almost like there’s not two people in the same genre of business so it’s just insane.

And so this is kind of a cool thing and this is what I wanted to share with you guys because……I might be ruining the surprise for Inner Circle members, but the first few groups at the end of it, I basically got up and thanked everyone and we gave everyone these shirts that say Inner Circle For Life on it. And I told them, “Look, this is the deal. The Inner Circle for me was never about making much money. I make good money on it, but you know Clickfunnels is what makes my real money. This is kind of a thing, in fact, there’s been multiple times where I almost shut it down because I don’t know if it’s worth doing and pursuing because it’s pulling me away from Clickfunnels, which is my focus. I finish I four day event like this, I can’t even fathom not having this in my life, how much I get from it. From the group and the people.

My goal with this was never a big coaching program where I could just keep running people through it, bring people in and let them back out the other side, which is how most other mastermind groups that are out there happen.” So because of that we set a cap, about a year ago…..and I think at the time we had 37 people in it. I was like, “If I was to know how I could facilitate this, I can’t facilitate more than 100 people the way I do it. So I’m going to cap it at 100 and when we get to 100 we’re going to stop selling it and close it out.”

And at first it was kind of a dream. I didn’t think that was actually possible. Then after we kind of put that limit on it, it grew almost instantly. It was crazy, bloomed and filled all the way up to 100 so we shut it down. What’s interesting is after we shut it down, then there’s always some kind of float where one or two people go out and then people come in and it goes back and forth.  It just kind of…applications come in and if we have spots we call them, if not we don’t. That’s kind of how it works. We have people fight and beg to get in sometimes.

So that’s kind of what happens, but recently, over the last few months, there’s been probably 5 or 6 people that have been in Inner Circle and then they’re like, “I love it, I don’t want to lose it, but I’ll put it on pause for 3 or 4 months and come back later. Hold my spot, though.” I was like, a couple of these first off, it’s not really fair to me or my team. I was like, it’s not really fair to them. It’s really not fair to the rest of the group. I said, “My goal is not to keep bringing new people into this group, my goal is I want to take this group and go deeper and deeper and deeper.”

So I basically told them that today.  So because of that, we decided to set this new rule. We gave everyone a shirt that says, Inner Circle For Life on it. The rule is if you need to leave the Inner Circle, for whatever reason, it’s totally cool and we’ll always remain friends but if you leave, you can’t get back in.  That’s the new rule, that’s it. So if you leave, your spot’s gone.  And what’s interesting is for the most part, everyone is laughing and cheering and excited for that.  And I didn’t tell everybody this but while I was sitting in the meeting, just today, not like the last four days, just today, we got 17 applications for Inner Circle during today’s session.

I almost wish I told them that. If you decide to leave, there’s a line up. 17 people today applied for your spot. And that’s coming in all the time. Some days are less, some days there’s 10, some days there’s 5. Whatever, but today alone, 17 applications came in for Inner Circle, and there’s not any…I actually have no idea. But I mean, it’s pretty dang close. If it’s not full there’s one or two spots. But then when those are in, it’s done.

Like I said, what I kind of told them is that if you cancel, we still love you, but you can’t get back in. And I want people there, in the Inner Circle for life. Because I want to be able to go, because even we have a new batch of probably 8 or 10 people that came in new since the Funnel Hacking Live event, it kind of got it back up to being at capacity. And today at, or the first day I spent the first 3 hours sharing the insanely cool stuff that we’re doing that I don’t have a chance to share anywhere else. So I’m showing all this stuff and I’m like, ahh….New people don’t have a foundation to build on this next level stuff. I’m trying to show what we’re doing to get from 8 figures to 9 figures, which is insanely ……it’s kind of crazy.

We went from 7 figures to 8 figures in a year and then I think in two to two and a half years we’ll pass 9 in a year. Which is crazy but how do you do that? It’s really shifting from…the traffic source isn’t how you do it, how you scale. I remember showing these guys all this stuff, but it sucks because some people, the newer people aren’t ready for that yet, because they don’t have the foundation of the last twelve months. The first twelve months of the Inner Circle is all about getting your front end funnel and lead in acquisition right to where you can consistently bring in people.

Not everyone, but the majority of the Inner Circle have that now. They’ve got funnels coming in consistently. It’s like, okay now we gotta build on this. So I wanted to shift and go super deep and I did, but I had to back step and spend almost 30 to 45 minutes giving the foundation. Here’s kind of to catch everyone new up. This is what we gotta focus on and you still gotta do that, but now let’s jump into where we’re going.

So many cool things I wish I could share with you guys. I wish everyone could be inner Circle. I wish it was possible. One of the cool things we were sharing was basically there are, and if you study Jay Abraham at all, there’s three ways to grow a company. Get more customers, get them to spend more, and then get them to buy more often. That’s the only three ways. Get more customers, get them to spend more, and get them to spend more often.

So you look at that, it’s like well how do you execute on that? So getting more customers are all about acquisition funnels. What are the funnels you have in your business that are there to acquire customers? Again, that’s the whole months of the Inner Circle have been getting our group masters at customer acquisition. I’d say more than half of our Inner Circle has a front end webinar that they’re consistently driving leads into every single day. It’s an acquisition thing. I would say the other half are other types of funnels. Some are book funnels, some are high ticket funnels, but most everyone has a really good lead acquisition funnels in place. That’s step number one, how to get more customers.

Step number two then, how to get your customers to pay more. That type of funnels is what we call an ascension funnel. We’ve got step one, the acquisition funnel, acquiring customers. Step two is ascension funnels for ascending customers. So I showed them behind the scenes of our ascension funnels. How are we getting people from dollar trial Clickfunnels to $97 a month to $297 to our $3000 to our $10000 and then to our $25000. What are the funnels inside of our business that are ascending people.

Where else can I talk about this kind of stuff. People have to be a certain level to understand this part of it. So I want to keep the group so I can keep going deeper, but I showed them acquisition funnels. I’m sure some of you saw Follow up Funnels. At the Funnel Hacking Live event I did a presentation about Follow up Funnels and we did it all for my birthday. Probably didn’t all sink in, in a week or two. But that ascension funnel is huge for us. It’s ascending people up from $97 a month to $300 a month and it’s huge for the growth of our company. So that’s number, again Number one, get more customers through acquisition funnels. Number two get your customers to spend more through ascension funnels. And then number three is get them to buy more often, and that’s through your monetization funnels.

So now it opens this question. What are all the monetization funnels that are possible? What could they be? So I was showing the ways for monetizing people on the back end. What’s interesting, this comes back to the new book, the new opportunity. So in the Expert Secrets book, the foundation, I wish I could…I wish you were sitting here and we were all on the same page. So three ways to build a culture, three ways to build a mass movement, attractive character, future based cause, and then the new opportunity. Then there’s two ways to structure the opportunity. One’s an opportunity switch and the other’s the opportunity stack.

Opportunity switch is usually your acquisition funnel, you’re switching them to a new opportunity and then everything else you sell that person in the future is an opportunity stack. So the monetization funnels are what are the other opportunities I can stack within this vehicle? I know for some of you guys, especially if you just got on my podcast are like, “What is Russell talking about? This sounds like math or PHD or something.” But if you go back through and listen and read the book…again, I just got done spending four days with my advanced members, so I’m geeking out.

So hopefully, those of you guys who are at that level are kind of geeking out with me. And those who are beginners are thinking, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, but this sounds amazing. I’m going to go study and this will make sense pretty soon.” When I was in school I remember my teachers talking, I had no idea what they’re saying and by the end of the semester I was like, “Oh, that’s what they’re saying. It’s still boring but at least I get it.” This won’t be boring when you get it. You’ll be like, “Oh my gosh. I’m making insane amounts of money.”

But that’s it, there’s three ways to grow a company. Acquisition funnels, ascension funnels, and monetization funnels. That’s it. So when you understand that, how these things flow together. Here’s an acquisition funnel, how do those link to ascension funnels? And how do those link to monetization funnels? Boom, there’s the process.

And then what’s cool is me showing…I talk a lot, and if you read the Dotcom Secrets book, I talk about hot traffic, warm traffic, and cold traffic, right. And typically I would say, if you get anyone online teaching traffic, they’re teaching hot or warm traffic. Hot traffic’s your market that loves you, so you just, they give you money because they love you. Then you go one step back to your warm audience, people always call this cold traffic, but it’s not. My definition of warm audience are people who are in your market but don’t know who you are yet.

So if I use Facebook ads, just by the nature of how you’re running them, you are running interest, right. They’re interested in internet marketing, they’re interested in weight loss, so you’re running ads to those people. That’s warm traffic.  Again, people always tell you it’s cold traffic. It’s not cold, you’re targeting interests, so it’s warm.

What cold traffic is, and I’ve been geeking out and studying Gary Halverson recently. Gary and also Kennedy, Dan Kennedy, he was talking about it in Renegade Millionaire, which is a cool course. But he was saying, every marketer’s dream is to be able to, and he’s talking about direct mail. Every marketer’s dream is to be able to take the yellow pages, or the white pages and just mail direct mail through the white pages and have it convert.

Offline this is the easier to quantify. You’re….well, it is for me because I understand a mailing list. If you understand a mailing list it works, right. Here’s your own mailing list, that’s your hot market. Your warm market are other buyers in the market that you are. You will rent lists of buyers, that’s your warm. And then cold is the phone book. So that’s the next level I’m trying to get with a lot of these guys, which is, even for us, we’re just starting to dabble in legitimately cold traffic right now. But I showed them what people in our industry are doing.

I showed them Brendon Burchard, what he’s doing right now with radio. He gets cold audience, the phone book people to come into his funnels.  I showed what Dean Graziosi’s doing with infomercials to get cold people in. I showed  just other things. That’s the next level. How do you structure, how do you switch your offers. I show them our hot market, this is how we structure an offer. Our warm market, that’s the Dotcom Secrets book was all about. We created it for our warm market, people who understood marketing and sales and had some kind of business. This book was for my warm audience.

The Expert Secrets book was designed for two reasons. One it would be a really cool book you guys are all going to love. And number two, it was built for cold audiences. Built so I could go mail the phone book and get everybody to come in. At least that’s the goal.

Anyway, I’m actually getting tired. I may make zero sense right now. It’s just exciting. So why am I sharing this with you guys? A couple of reasons. First off, for all of you guys who are selling coaching this would probably be for you. Number one is don’t just build a program where you just push people through. That’s how most of them are done out there and it’s like you’re just pushing cattle through. You can make money along the way but you don’t get to go deep with people.

So like I said, the first thing is we limited ours and said, okay we’re only going to have 100 people in our group and we did. And we figured out a way to facilitate 100 people that doesn’t destroy me, but also gives the group and people what they need from me. But then it also makes the group insanely strong because there’s so much, it’s just so awesome. So that’s step number one.

Step number two is try to build a culture. When people come in, when they leave they can’t necessarily come back. Most of us allow customers to leave, come and go. And I understand. We do that in Clickfunnels and other things. I was listening to a Matt Furey CD from like, I don’t know, 10 years ago and he’s talking his members. He had a continuity program at the time and he said, “You can cancel any time you want, but if you cancel you can’t come back in.” I was like, “That’s cool.” It puts more personal responsibility back in their hands and it kind of does for you as well. You’ve got to carry a good enough experience too that you can keep people in. It can be a challenge for me.

Mandy who helps run the Inner Circle with me, we brought it up to her and she was game, and I was game. So we were like, alright. Let’s do this. It was interesting because I shared it with half the group, the first 50 entrepreneurs that came through the last four days. For the most part, all of them were really excited by that.

So I encourage you guys when you’re hiring coaching to do two things. One thing is limit the number, number two is don’t let people leave and come back in. And it’ll force you to be better. It’ll force them to commit. And it’ll give you the ability to go deeper with people. And all the stuff I shared with you over the last 18 minutes and 28 seconds is stuff that probably over a lot of people’s heads and I understand that. But when you’ve been in the room with me for a while, those things start lighting up and all the sudden it’s like, “Oh my gosh.” It becomes more clear.

For me, it’s taken a long time to get this clarity and even in Inner Circle, we’re layering things on. Every meeting we’re layering things on. We’re layering and then I just look at the, I was thinking about last year, for example. Last year, at the last funnel hacking live, when people started coming into the Inner Circle that was the first time we started talking about building a culture. And started talking about epiphany bridges. All last year my entire focus with that group was building a culture and epiphany bridge stories, and perfect webinar. That was our message for the last twelve months.

And look at it now. Look at those who came through. We’ve got, I always brag about them. You guys can guess who they are, I’m not going to say their names again because…..alright I’ll tell you, it’s Brandon and Kaelin. Their webinar, they’re getting 500 customers a day right now off a webinar.  A perfect webinar that they did through Facebook Live. It’s so cool. They’re doing the best with their webinar, but seeing person after person after person, Tara Williams did her first webinar and closed 20 or 25% of her audience. Just killed it.

And then Alison Prince did her first webinar, She joined Inner Circle six weeks ago. She never heard who I was and then she was at Affiliate Summit, and I was the only speaker that who didn’t get drunk, who wasn’t drunk speaking. So she called our offices, and she joined the Inner Circle, came to the FHAT Event, wrote a webinar and this Monday, four days ago, she did her first webinar and did $20,000 in sales and now she’s got this tool that will make her millions over the next six months or so. I’m not sure exactly where I was going with this. It’s been a long week, a long night.

It’s just fun because she can go deep with people and that’s what I want. I want to be able to take this group, my Inner Circle and I don’t look at it as a way for me to make money because this is a way to legitimately change the world and go really deep with these entrepreneurs. And it’s just fun.

Anyway, I hope that helps. It could be just rambling, and if it is, I apologize. You can just skip this episode and listen to the next one when I’m not quite as tired. But it’s been amazing. The last four days have been fun. It’s been a hard week though. It’s funny, Monday and Tuesday we had the first group. Tuesday we did a little dinner party that both groups could hang out at. Then Wednesday my wife flew off to go to a Tony Robbins event. So she’s gone. Luckily, we’ve got a helper who helps out during the day, she helps with the kids. Wednesday night, I forgot I had to teach scouts. I got done with the meeting, I had to come home, get my kids. My twins are in scouts. I grab the kids, get our scout shirts on, leave my little daughter with the other kids, we race over and I teach scouts for an hour. Race back home and get the kids to bed.

It’s funny, without your wife here, I know my wife works hard, but it always seems easier….I shouldn’t say this but from an outside view, it looks easy what they do, but when you’re in charge of doing it you’re like, “Wow, they really do a lot. Who knew this whole time?” you know what I mean? Playing dad and waking up early in the morning and getting kids ready, getting their lunch ready, getting stuff done. The hustle and bustle, getting them on the school bus, getting their hair combed and boom, they’re out the door. And I’m like, oh crap. Inner Circle starts in 30 minutes. So I’m running, showering, shaving, racing out the door.

I get to Inner Circle meeting like 5 minutes late. I’m like, “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to playing mom and dad.” Then run the Inner Circle and today was an emotionally impactful day, it was awesome. So as soon as I get done with Inner Circle and I had to race and get my kids and get my daughter from soccer practice, and then they had a big school art party tonight. They were all starving because we didn’t have time to eat dinner yet. So we swung by KFC and ate a bunch of chicken and root beer, which was super unhealthy and everyone’s angry and tired.

I got them all to bed and now I’m sitting on the couch rambling. The last four days have been insane. Anyway, I’m excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s going to be a little more relaxed. I have some projects I gotta get done and then I’ll be having some fun while the wife’s away. And then she’ll be back and then we’ll be good.

Not sure why I’m telling you guys all this stuff. I must be tired or lonely or both. Anyway, I’m going to go watch 24 now because it’s still the best show on TV, even though Jack Bauer is gone. I’m going to cross my fingers that he comes back. In fact, I don’t know if you guys watch, 24’s got the new….I can’t remember what it’s called, the new one. Jack Bauer is not in it, but he’s the executive producer, but at the same time I’m also watching Designated Survivor where Jack Bauer is now, I guess it’s Keifer Sutherland, but Jack Bauer, he’s now the president in that show.

I’m thinking what’s going to happen is somewhere in the middle there’s going to be a crossover event where it’s 24 and all the sudden people at CET are going to realize that Jack Bauer is actually the president and they’re going to be like, “Wait a minute, you’re Jack Bauer.” And then he’s like, “Wait a minute.” And then Jack Bauer faked as the HUD secretary in Designated Survivor….anyway, it’s going to be amazing.

If you’re not watching either of those shows you have no idea what I’m talking about. But if you watch both of them you just had a geek out moment with me and you’re like, yes. They’re doing a crossover event, and Jack Bauer is coming back. Hopefully because that would be amazing. If I was writing for both these guys, I would be.

Alright I’m going to stop before I say something really dumb. Anyway you guys, I appreciate you all. Have an amazing night, weekend. We’re a few weeks away from the launch of the new book. Oh w’ere doing something cool. Okay, one more thing.

So the new Facebook Messenger stuff is the new craze. Everyone’s talking about how cool it is. Everyone’s convinced it’s going to be the greatest thing in marketing since sliced bread. I think it’ll be cool, but I don’t think it’ll be that cool. But I think it’s going to be cool for a while. I’m pretty sure people like me will abuse it and then Facebook will take it away. So I’m not banking on it as a long term strategy, but definitely banking on it as a short term strategy.

And then if it does happen to stay long term that would be awesome. But I feel like it’s way too easy to abuse. But while it’s abusable, we’re going to. So basically what it is, you can get people, you can run an ad in Facebook, get people to click on something and then it ads them to your Facebook messenger, and then you can send out auto responders and mass broadcast to everyone who’s ever subscribed to your Facebook messenger, which is awesome.

So I recorded a quick little video today, and we’re going to run it tomorrow through Facebook live and basically give away the first three chapters of the book if they click on the, if they join my Facebook messenger. So my goal is to try to get, I don’t know, 20-100,000 people in the next month to get the first three chapters of the book for free through Facebook messenger. Then when we go live, I can have 100,000 people to spam, I mean mass market, I mean communicate with about our book launch happening. It would be pretty amazing. Anyway, I’m excited.

And I also got, so many cool things. I forgot, so for our affiliate contest, we’re kind of having a big super hero theme, Todd found these Superman, not Superman, but Batman, Ironman, costumes. But they’re not costumes, they’re legit. I bought one, they’re 3 grand. They custom fit it to you. Then they mold the metal. I’m pretty much Batman. They ship me it, they took a picture, they’re about to ship it. It should be here, I think, early next week. I’m going to be doing a bunch of JV videos with it. And we’re going to be giving away a bunch of those outfits to people who win our affiliate contest. But I’m actually going to be Batman within a week.

And it’s not like the wimpy Batman from back in the day. It’s the Batman vs Superman. Even though Ben Affleck is lame, the suit that he wore, he looks like the biggest baddest Batman of all time. That’s the one I bought. So I’m really looking forward to that as well.

Alright guys, well 26 minutes. It’s the equivalent of 22 normal Marketing In Your Car podcasts. So I’m going to be done for today. Appreciate you guys. Hopefully this makes some sense. Talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Mar 20, 2017

Here’s an update at what happened at Grant Cardone’s big event.

On today’s episode Russell recaps his experience at Grant Cardone’s 10x event. He shares some of the hiccups that happened as well as the successes.

Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this episode:

  • What some of the things were that went wrong at the beginning of Russell’s presentation.
  • How many sales Russell made with only 4 sales people taking orders.
  • And find out why Grant Cardone and his team said Russell had the best sales pitch they had ever seen.

So listen below to find out how well Russell did at the Grant Cardone event.

---Transcript---

Hey good morning everybody. This is Russell, and it is a little bit rainy and kind of nice today. I’m heading into the first Inner Circle meeting of this year, actually. It’s kind of cool. And it’s the first Inner Circle meeting from the new office, which is even cooler. So I’m definitely looking forward to that and it’s going to be cool.

I just got back from, if you’ve been listening to the podcast in sequential order, you know that last week we went to speak at Grant Cardone’s event, which was pretty cool. So I’m just going to give you a quick recap on that because it turned out pretty awesome.

Basically, I was doing an event out there, but I couldn’t go the whole time because I love my kids and my wife and I wanted to be with them, but also there was a whole bunch of buyers in a room. I was like, “I want to go speak to them, ask them for money and get them into Clickfunnels.” So Friday morning we jumped in a plane, flew all the, it’s crazy going east. From Boise to the East coast, we flew all day long. We left, we almost missed our flight actually, but then we left here at 8am I think and we landed on the east coast at 7 or 8 pm. You lose all the time, and the layovers and all that kind of stuff. So the whole day is shot.

So that was then, then the next morning I woke up and I was, there was one person speaking before me and then I was up. So that night before, I always get nervous until I see the room. So I’m freaking out nervous, and I go see the room. The room was huge, it was really long. Funnel Hacking Live we do it width wise, so I can be closer to everyone, this was long. Anyway, super long room. There was a little over 2200 seats that were there.

So I’m looking at the room, this is going to be awesome, so excited. So I went there that night, worked on my slides, made tweaks and changes. To make this match more stuff for his audience. I went to bed and woke up in the morning and it was game time. So I went down there to the event. The room was packed, tons of energy, tons of people. It was so fun. Obviously, slightly nerve wracking as well, it gets me nervous.

What’s kind of frustrating is we had all these things for them, this is how the room needs to be set up, we need to have tables, sales people and all these things. I don’t think they believed us. They didn’t give us any sales people to sell. We had luckily, two of our inner circle members, Alex Hermosian, Layla were there. So they came to help us sell. Dave Woodward was with me, so we had three people and they were trying to find other people from the audience. So we had 2200 people and basically 5 sales people. They didn’t have any tables, so we kind of brought some tables in to take sales from.

So it was not an ideal situation at all. But whatever, you do what you do, right. So I get on stage, it was fun. Grant got up the first morning he spoke, and I’d never heard him speak before. It was fun to see him, he’s all exciting. Then they had a lady spoke right after me. Then I got to introduce him on stage, it was nuts how big the room was. I felt kind of nervous at first, I started speaking, and I got, kind of a jumbled mess at first if I’m completely honest.

Then I started going through my slides and I realized they were using the wrong slides. These were not the slides that I gave them. These were not the slides I spent four hours on the day before on the plane and in the hotel room, getting it tweaked for these guys. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what do I do? Do I just keep going, or say something.” So I’m even more flustered and I’m like, “These are not the right slides. Can you change them real quick?” I was freaking out. But luckily, pretty quickly they changed them out. I was like, “Thank heavens.”

So I start going on my presentation, and as I’m doing it, again at the very first it was kind of weird. I switched one thing around, I had put Garrett White’s testimony, if you guys have seen the webinar, I moved it up earlier in the presentation, but it was too early.  So I showed the video and usually at that point in the thing people are laughing, but I showed it and it was kind of flat. I was like, “Oh crap.” I jumped a little too early. I changed it after I got back in the plane, for the next presentation. Shifted some things around.

But by the end, I started getting into my pitch and Grant Cardone is sitting on the front row. And I see him, every time I’m doing something he’s taking notes as fast as he can. Taking notes, taking notes. I’m like, “This is kind of cool. The dude who teaches sales is studying my sales pitch.” It was pretty cool. So I do my whole thing. Boom, we get a table rush, people running to the side. I finished the presentation and I go back behind the stage and Grant came up to me, “Dude, that’s why I’m not able to sale on stage. I’ve never done it the way you just did it.” And then all his team were like, “That was the best sales pitch I have ever seen.” Over and over and over again.

I was like, this is coming from these guys. It was very flattering. I was patting my own back, not going to lie, which was pretty cool. So then, when all is said and done, I went outside and took a bunch of pictures with everybody and then our guys, our four people in there taking sales, with an audience of 2200 people, four people taking sales, which is crazy.

After the break, comes back and I walk over to Dave and he’s got this huge stack of order forms. I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” At the same time, we had to check out of our room, we were passed our check out time. And we called for an early checkout and they told us no, and we’re like, well we’re going to be down there anyway, sorry. So we went back to the room, Alex and Layla came up with us and started counting order forms. I’m packing my bags and trying to get ready so we can leave.

This is crazy, and this is considering the fact that we only had four sales people and not things ideal for selling. Had we had like 20 or 30 sales people, I think we probably could have doubled this. If we would have had  a couple of things tweaked around. But regardless, the number of sales we made were, and I was selling a $2000 product. It was 300, I can’t remember. When all is said and done, actual money was about $750,000 in sales. So three quarters of a million dollars, from the activity.

Remember two podcasts ago I was like, “Basically I’m going to be flying down to Florida and picking up a check and flying back.” And that’s kind of what happened, which is cool. The way it works, so you guys know how the event seminar world works. The promoter gets half, so we’ll be processing orders this week and then we’ll send them a check for half of that, then we get the other half, and we get a whole bunch of members and hopefully we inspire people to use Clickfunnels, even those that did sign up, it was cool.

The funny thing is in presentation I talk about how we used to charge people 100 grand to set up a funnel and 10% of what they make, but we stopped doing that, because I don’t have time for those right now. I had two or three people, I had two people for sure and one person in between that came up like, “Okay, I want the 100 grand deal. Where? Do you want a check? You want me to wire the money?” We’re like, “I don’t really do that anymore.” Anyway, it was kind of funny.

But that’s about it. So there’s a recap of what just happened. And it was fun and thankful for Dave Woodward, and Alex and Layla for helping get the sales, making it happen. Those guys closed more sales in a 20 minute period of time than probably anybody on planet earth. It was awesome.

I’m at the office now, I’m going to go get things set up for the Inner Circle, I will talk to you guys all again soon. Bye everybody.

Mar 15, 2017

This is the part of business that I honestly hate the most.

On today’s episode Russell shares what he feels are the worst parts of being a business owner including having to fire people. He talks about feeling horrible whenever he has to let someone go, even if they needed to be let go.

Some of the other things you’ll hear in this episode are:

  • Why when you start a business you don’t think about some of the not so fun parts that come with it.
  • What some of the parts of owning a business suck the most.
  • And why after 14 years of having employees, it is still so painful for Russell to let people go, and how he finds solace in it.

So listen below to find out the parts of being a business owner that suck.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, good morning. Today is a beautiful day, and I’m grateful. Yesterday was a tough day, but today is beautiful. I’m out here, riding my bike again, it’s a little chilly and I wore shorts today. Probably a little too early to be in shorts. I think I could do shorts or I could do bike, but doing both this early in the morning is probably not a good idea. I’m feeling it already.

Anyway, I hope… I gotta go back and listen to the last podcast I did on my bike and see if you guys can hear what I’m talking about. Hopefully the wind is not too bad. I’m heading into the office today, we’ve got a webinar for Funnel Scripts 2.0. It’s actually Funnel Scripts, but Jim’s at a lot more and we’re doing it. It’s been a year since we launched it, so we’re re-launching it and raising the price and it’s going to be fun. So that’s what’s happening today in about 90 minutes, less than that. It’s happening here, pretty soon.

I’ve been thinking a lot, most of the podcast I just talk about happy-go-lucky stuff and cool things we’re doing and stuff like that. But sometimes business sucks. Sometimes it’s hard and something I want to talk about today, and I have another idea for a podcast that I might share in the future. I’m nervous about sharing that one but I’m just going over my regrets of the past ten years. Because I do have regrets.

I almost did a podcast a little while ago, but then I wimped out. I have it in my head and I think I will soon, but not today. Today is not so much about regrets as much as just the sad side of business. It’s tough because when you get started as an entrepreneur,  I don’t know about you but I just wanted to sell stuff. I just wanted to create and sell, create and sell, that’s the fun part. That’s the part of business that’s so much fun. Initially when you start it, it’s just you in your basement or closet or on your laptop in your bedroom. Whatever it is, maybe one day you get a partner and you’re starting and you’re starting the creative process and doing stuff and having fun and selling, trying to sell………dang it’s cold. My fingers are numb.

But what’s interesting, at first you have all these problems. “I can’t figure out how to sell, I can’t figure out how to do this. No one’s buying. I can’t get traffic…” all the problems that happen at the first of your business, right. And I understand those, I remember those. I worked with a lot of people going through those. That part of business kind of sucks too. But after a while you figure out what are you selling? What do people actually want? What are they excited for? You figure out how to get traffic and eyeballs consistently. You start doing some cool stuff there. And that part becomes really, really fun.

Everything is working and you’re like, “Sweet, all my problems are solved. Making sales, making money, things are good.” But then what happens? You start getting a lot of customers, they start emailing you, and you get more of them, and then eventually you start drowning in supporting all the customers that come in. I remember for a long time I prided myself, “I answer all my own emails.” And then after a couple of years of that I couldn’t do it anymore. I went crazy. I couldn’t go on vacation, if I was on vacation I was stressing out.

I couldn’t create anymore because I was so busy. So finally I had to hire someone to help support. And that freed me. As soon as you hire your first support person you’ve got people. There’s payroll and taxes and all these new problems introduced. And as you keep growing, you try to figure out ways to maximize your time and figure out things you like the most and do that and start outsourcing and hiring people to do the other parts. And you go from one person to two to five to ten.

Now in Clickfunnels, we have just shy of 100 people now. Crazy. I swore I would never get back to this spot. But we’ve been a lot smarter this time around. With 100 people there’s all sorts of new challenges and issues. Especially in my business where 90% of your employees are entrepreneurs and they all want to be selling stuff and it’s hard to keep them focused. That’s a constant struggle on my side. There’s other things, tax issues, trademarking, now we’ve got all sorts of people out there using Clickfunnels, so now we’re hiring a full-time legal person just to scour the internet for compliance. It’s like, ugh. Success breeds a whole new level of challenges and hard things that you don’t think about when you’re trying to figure out how to sell something at the beginning.

But they come and there’s just different, what do they call it? There’s different Swont Analysis. Strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. There’s different opportunities at each level. But of everything the thing that I think sucks the worst in this whole business is when the people you love and care about and people who have done great work for you that for whatever reason you have to let them go. I still can’t get over that.

I remember the first time I fired someone I cried for the next hour. The person was a horrible person, looking back now, not only should I have fired them, I should have called the cops and locked him up. But I still cried like a little baby. Yesterday we had to let go a couple people that I’ve known a long time, that I care about. It didn’t, it wasn’t the right fit anymore. Man, for me it destroys me. All day yesterday I couldn’t even function or think or eat.

I hate it because I know what our business means to me and if someone took that away from me, how I would feel. I think I’d place all those things on them. It’s horrible. But it’s one of those things that has to happen and doesn’t always make logical sense but sometimes you…..I don’t know.

So I just wanted to share with you guys today because I know, depending where you’re at there’s different pains you are all going through. There’s different pains every step in this process, but the ones for me that are always the worst, is parting with people that are amazing, that you care about and you want to succeed. This is what the one thing that has given me comfort. I feel like if someone’s not completely happy in a spot or doesn’t fit, doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, us, as business owners, try really hard to make it work and try to, what do they say? Put a round peg in a square hole, or vice versa.

We can do that but I think not only does it hurt the business, but I think it hurts them more often than not. So usually there’s this huge pain of being able to let somebody go. But looking back now at the last almost 14 years now of having employees and seeing some of their journeys afterwards is like, it was so much pain letting that person go. But I look at what came from that, and it was the best thing. If that, if we hadn’t ever done this, that new door in their life wouldn’t have opened.

For example, I can’t give the details, but someone we had to let go about 6 months ago, probably 8 months ago now, it was really painful. I care about them, their family, their kids. It was, I bawled my eyes out. But I look now 8 months later and where that person went to at their next job, opened up the door, which radically changed that person’s life.  Had we have selfishly kept them, it wouldn’t have served us or them.

Anyway, so that’s the only thing that kind of gives me solace. Is that the right word? Solitude? Solace? I think solace. Anyway, it makes me feel a little bit better at times like this. Anyway I just wanted to give you that podcast and let you know, wherever you’re at, whatever the challenges are you are struggling with, I get it. I’ve felt it at different levels. I think the biggest thing is just understanding that and being okay with it and just keep moving forward. Don’t lose sight of your vision of what you’re trying to create and who you’re trying to serve.

At the end of the day that’s the most important thing. There will be people who come and go and help you on your mission in different stages and I think those people are brought into your life and out of your life on purpose for different reasons. When you look at it that way, hopefully it makes some of the challenges a little bit easier. With that said, it’s a beautiful day today. It’s webinar day, it can’t get better than webinar day. We just sell some amazing stuff and change people’s lives, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m grateful for the sun shining this morning, and grateful for all of you guys. With that said, I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Mar 14, 2017

Your real mission is to gather people and serve them at your highest level.

On today’s episode Russell talks about having a gathering and how you build one. He shares the kinds of gatherings he already has, and how gathering gatherers can help build your business.

Here are some of the cool things in today’s episode:

  • The different examples of gatherings you and your people can be a part of.
  • And how what you are doing has an impact on someone else’s life, which in turn has an impact on someone else’s live and you have the ability to impact many more lives than you originally could.

So listen below to find out how to gather and impact more people than you ever thought possible.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, good morning. This is Russell and I am heading to, not the worst place I can go in the morning. The worst place would be probably the accountants, they’re definitely the worst. Number two used to be lawyers, but my lawyer now is super awesome, so that’s cool. Number three is the dentist, so I’m heading to the dentist right now, which is not my favorite thing, but it’s that time. I got some weird thing on the left side of my mouth when I bite down. It really hurts, so hopefully they can fix that and I hope I don’t have any cavities, but I’ll let you guys know.

But this morning, I woke up and had a coaching session with one of my coaches, Tara Williams, which was really, really cool. She said something that I thought was cool and it got my mind thinking and then more and more cool stuff started happening. But we’re talking about the new book, and if I’m being completely honest there’s a lot of stress and pressure on me right now. Even though the book’s finally done, there’s…of course I can’t just sell a book you guys. I got all excited and had this idea for this Funnel Hacker Blackbox, which then meant I had a whole bunch of other stuff. And then there’s a bunch of….anyway, a lot of stuff going together to make this, I want to make this buying experience when you guys buy the book, the most fun thing ever. I want you to be like, “that was so fun we should buy it again.” That’s the goal.

So with that we’re just making a really cool funnel that would be really cool for you guys to funnel hack and then watch and learn and really hopefully model and use in your world. But we’re talking, oh I almost turned left and I’m glad I didn’t because there is insane traffic, and I’m already late for the dentist, so that was close.

But what we were talking about is gathering. What we do is we’re gathering people. So I think about each of your businesses, we talked about this from a list building standpoint, or from getting customers or things like that. Or I’d be putting products and services out there in the world. And you’re doing that to gather certain types of people to you. That’s the whole point of what we’re all doing. We create some amazing things that cause value in the world and in people’s lives. They get those things and then they gather to you.

Ten year ago those gatherings were like, “Okay, well people are on my email list.” But there was no physical gathering. Then we started doing events and there was kind of a physical gathering of people. Now, I look at facebook groups and it’s become kind of like the gathering spot. Most programs have a facebook group. We have that, we have our Funnel Hacker Group, which is all of you all. If you’re not in that by the way, you should come. We’ve got 50,000 people in that now. 50,000, if you go to projectclickfunnels.com it redirects you to our facebook group. Because I couldn’t remember how to get people there, so I bought projectclickfunnels.com.

But there’s 50,000 people gathered there together talking about what we’re all talking about. And then there’s, for different products we sell, like Inner Circle’s got a different group. People are gathered together. We communicate and hang out in this group. So we’re gathering. So for each of you guys, that’s kind of big piece of this pie. How are you gathering people together so that then when they’re together and they’re congregated together, you can serve them in the highest way that you are able to. Those are your products and services and training and podcasts, and coaching and blah. Supplements, whatever it is you’re selling, that’s really the goal.

Businesses become less transactional and is now more gathering people and figuring out how to serve them. That mindset shift is pretty big. There’s these gatherings and what was kind of cool. We were talking about, with the Expert Secrets book we’re gathering. That’s, I didn’t know this was my goal, but what’s interesting, and even with the Funnel Hackers and Clickfunnels and stuff, I am gathering gatherers, which is super cool when you think about it.

My goal is to gather all these people together and get them to start mass movements. That’s the whole point of the new book. How to build your own movement of people you can change and inspire and help and serve.  So that’s my goal, is to gather all the gatherers, which is insanely cool and a huge honor. As I’m just thinking about that as a calling or a mission or whatever you want to call it. It’s a pretty cool thing. My job is to serve you guys so that you can gather more people and serve them. And hopefully during this whole process we have a little bit of impact on the world and we change people’s lives and we make things better and give people hope and faith in the future and what’s possible and make everyone’s journey’s here on the world a little bit better.

It was interesting, I heard someone talk about this before. Tony Robbins at our event was talking about why we all do what we do. He said, “When it all comes down to it. We’re doing it for feeling.” I was like, huh. How weird is that? We read books because the feeling, we watch a movie because of the feeling, we hang out with people because of the feeling we get. Feelings is what drives everything. It’s the feeling that we’re seeking, that we’re trying to get. A certain feeling we liked in the past, or that we didn’t like, we’re trying to stay away from that feeling.

And I’m not sure how this whole thing ties together, but when all is said and done, our goal is to gather people together so we can help them to feel good. I know that’s simplifying, way over simplifying the whole thing. Or is it? That’s kind of the thing. Why do I gather all of you guys together? I’ll say guys and gals. Why do I gather you guys together? Obviously there’s something I’m excited about and I’m sharing it. And it’s a tool and a theology and thought process that helps you be able to share your messages.

By me sharing it, I feel better. I feel happy. It makes me, it gets me excited, being able to share these things and seeing the light bulb go off in your heads. But then you gather people and you’re not necessarily teaching what I’m teaching. But you’re teaching your own thing. Maybe it’s weight loss or fitness, I guess weight loss and fitness are similar. But whatever it is that you do, you’re gathering people together and selling them products and services that make them feel good.  And that’s kind of it. If you really boil it down.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I just started thinking about that. How do we give people those good feelings? How do we make support better so that people have good feelings when they deal with it? How do make the product better so they have better feelings? It’s all about feelings, that’s what we’re all looking for. That’s why people fall in love, that’s why they do drugs, on the positive and negative side, they’re all looking to get a special feeling or to stay away from a feeling they don’t like.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I don’t really know the point of my ramblings today other than I thought it was really cool to kind of look at this as each of us are gatherers. You’re gathering people. You’re gathering your tribe. You’re gathering your people that resonate with you and your message and who you are. And then after you’ve gathered them, you can serve them, help them and you can try to effect their lives by making them have better feelings. Feeling better about themselves and things around them, about the future and all those things.

What’s interesting is that when people are happy they treat other people better, it’s this huge compounding thing. It’s like a ripple, I hate using that because if you guys listened to the podcast back from day one, back when we were working on the project Rippln, but it never went. That was the whole concept. Throw a rock into the middle of a pond, what happens? There’s a ripple and it keeps going all the way out to the edge of the pond. And that’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re gathering people together, give them this ripple in their lives and it goes out.

It’s kind of corny when you say, “We’re going to change the world.” But we kind of are. Isn’t that cool when you think about it that way? The thing you’re doing has an impact and it changes somebody else’s life and it changes somebody else’s and it kind of ripples out.

So anyway, with that said, I just wanted to state that everyone keep on doing what you’re doing despite some of the pressure and stress and things that go into it. The ups and downs and failures and successes. All of those things are all wrapped into it. When all is said and done, what’s the real purpose? We’re gathering our people. Gather your people, they will come to you, the right people. And not everyone’s going to come to you or me or anyone, there’s people who can’t stand me. Especially after some of my fun jokes and stuff recently. There’s a lot of people who don’t like me. That’s cool. I don’t mind. It used to bug me, but it’s okay now. Because what is important, is my people, the people I am congregating will hear my voice, come to me and listen and I’ll be able to have impact and hopefully cause a change and make their lives better.

Like I said, my goal is to gather gatherers, and I think what fires me up more than anything is knowing that if I can affect you and help you gather more people, or serve more people at a higher level, if I can affect you and again, I’m not talking to everyone listening to this podcast, I’m talking to you. Yes, you the one listening right now. If I can affect you, to help people and to cause that gathering amongst your people, how cool is that? There’s thousands or millions of people that you can affect, that I never could. Because my gifts aren’t what yours are. But your gifts are special.

And I don’t want to, I think I might have bragged them yesterday because I’m so excited about it. But Brandon and Kaelin from Inner Circle, their numbers are insane right now. They’re getting 500 people a day joining their program. 500 women a day are coming and they’re helping these women look at themselves differently and lose weight and feel better. And usually what happens, I don’t know about you, but when I get on a weight loss kick, what do I do? I tell my friends and family and spouse and kids and we all, it’s a ripple effect that goes out there.

And I can’t do what Kaelin does. I can’t do what Tara does. I can’t do what….I’m trying to think of everyone in my inner circle. All the people we effect in the work, I can’t do what you do. But if I can help you gather more people and serve them at a higher level, that’s the key. That’s my mission.

Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. I hope it helps you think about what you do a little bit.  And understand that that’s the goal, gather your people and that could be through building a list, podcasts, groups, whatever it is, you’re gathering people together and you’re trying to serve them at the highest level possible. That’s it, that’s the game. When you do that, they’re going to feel good. And when they feel good, people around them will feel good and it’ll trickle down. Kind of cool.

Anyway, I’m getting close to the dentist, but I’m still stuck in a lot of traffic, but I’m going to bounce, cause I am behind on my Voxers and my inner circle members need some responses, dang it. So I’m going to go catch up with them. Appreciate you all and we will talk soon.

Mar 13, 2017

An observation on people’s webinars who aren’t having the success that they want.

On this episode Russell talks about The Perfect Webinar and how people get confused about not teaching and goes over what you need to do.

Here are some interesting things in this episode:

  • How much money Russell is hoping to make this weekend at a seminar.
  • And why you should be teaching the “What” and selling the “How”.

So listen below if you are struggling with The Perfect Webinar, this might be why.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, this is Russell. I’m out riding my bike to the office because today is a beautiful day. I hope the wind’s not too loud. Anyway, there’s a huge hot air balloon out in the sky. This is a sign that it’s going to be an amazing day, it’s gotta be.

And then this morning I woke up at 5:00, which was awesome, I got three hours worth of stuff done, well probably two and a half hours before the kids were up. I’m feeling good and excited for today. This whole week is going to be amazing. This weekend I’m flying out to speak to Grant Cardone’s audience, teach those guys about some funnels, which is going to be so much fun. In fact, I’m going to fly for forever, by I fly Friday all day, I land and speak Saturday morning and fly home Saturday night. So twenty four hours, less than twenty four hours and hopefully we’ll go and you it’s kind of funny, I used to be a public speaker. I was doing that and that was my job, my gig, my thing.

I would figure out how much money I would make per attendee, then I’d be like okay, so based on this means I’m going to make x. For example this weekend Grant said there’s 2100 people in the room, if that’s true and his people, how do I say this nicely? They are funnel beginners, I’ll say funnel beginners for recorded history. My guess is if I screw it up, I should close 30% of the room. If I do awesome, it should be 50%. So let’s say 30%, let’s say there’s 2000, I’m not that good at numbers, especially while riding a bike.

So that means 30% would be 600 people, what I sell from the stage is 2 grand, so 600 would be 1.2 million and then I get to keep half of that. So I would bring home 600k. So basically I’m flying across the country to go pick up a check for $600k and I’ll be back in 24 hours. Isn’t that exciting? I’m excited for it, and hopefully I’ll close more than 30%.  I’m hoping 50%, so we will see, but I’m excited.

It’s funny, because I’m not allowed to share how much we spent to get Tony Robbins to come, Marcus, all those guys out it in their contract and I’m not allowed to say, but it’s a lot. Somewhere between, on the low end 70-80 thousand, to the high end, over a quarter of a million bucks and beyond. Those guys are like famous people, so I’m not famous, but I know how to sell, so my check is actually bigger than them.

It’s funny, one of my first speaking mentors is John Childers, he used to talk about that, “I’m not famous but I make 10x of what Norm Schwartzkopf makes on a speech because I know how to sell from the stage.” I always thought that was cool. It’s really cool now, looking and being like dang, that actually happens now.

I wanted to share something with you guys today because I think it’s so tough and you learn this as you keep doing it. So Perfect Webinar, dang I’m out of shape. I’m just moving my feet barely. I should not be this tired, but it is freezing cold out here. My fingers are red and numb. Anyway, what was I going to say? Oh yeah.

So as I’ve been teaching this, the biggest thing how to get people to break, everyone was in teaching mode, and so they teach for the whole webinar and they’re not making any sales or very few sales. I was like no, the content of the webinar is not about teaching, it’s about using stories to break false belief patterns and rebuild them. So people are shifting that singular, and crushing it. For example, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to brag about this, I’ll do it anyway. So Brandon and Kaelin in the Inner Circle, who are amazing, I’ve talked about them a bunch. They joined Inner Circle a year ago. They did 80,000 dollars that month. It’s been now, almost a year, and this month they did a million dollars in a month. Which is nuts and insane and amazing. They’re amazing. So fun to watch them.

So some of you will get it and just crush it. Someone will get it sometimes and forget other times, but one of the big things, mistakes people are making is they shift all 100% to belief breaking and they tell a story but they’re not teaching anything. They’re like, “Well you said not to teach.” I’m like, “I said not to teach, but if you look at the epiphany bridge script, which you guys get more access when the Expert Secrets book comes out, but I’m walking through my epiphany, you hear the back story, the internal and external fears, and from there, you go on this journey and you have an epiphany, and from there you create a plan. So what is the plan? The plan is this what. What am I going to do? So first I’m going to try this and then this, and you walk people through what the plan was. Then in the plan you hit conflict, which causes emotions. You talk about the conflict, the issues that came up. Then you got the resolution and you have the resolution of the external and the internal.” So that’s like the process. But when I’m talking about the plan, I’m talking about, I’m going through it step by step. This is me teaching. I’m showing this is my plan. This is what I did. Step one I did this, step two…..so you’re showing the “what”. You’re not going into the “how”, but you’re showing the “what” when you’re showing the plan.

I can get people a plan, “Here’s the plan. You gotta build the funnel.” But they still gotta invest because they gotta understand the “How”. But I gotta give them the what. That gets them inspired, they see, “Oh my gosh, that’s going to make people feel like they’re learning” When they see the “what”, and then when you sell, it’s the how.

So I just wanted to kind of throw it out there in case anyone’s like, “I’m doing what Russell said, I’m not teaching anything.” I’m like, “No, it’s not that you’re not teaching anything. You’re doing it through story, with the goal of breaking the belief pattern and then when you’re walking people through the plan, that’s where you’re doing the teaching of the “What” not the “how”. When you understand that part, that’s what makes it crush it.

So I hope that helps, but I’m at the office. Not too bad, about a 5 minute bike ride from my house. Good to know now. Anyway, appreciate you all for listening. Have a great day, great week. And if any of you guys are going to be at Grant Cardone’s seminar, come say hi and please, please wear one of your funnel hacker t-shirts. Funnel Hacker, It’s a cult, we’re not confusion soft, any one you got, make sure to wear it. With that said, I’ll talk to you all again soon.

Mar 10, 2017

Behind the scenes on what I’m recording today.

On this episode Russell talks about the new survey element now available for free on Clickfunnels. He also shares his plans for what his team is calling Superfunnels.

Here are some of the interesting things in this episode:

  • Find out what Superfunnels is and what it will do.
  • How Superfunnels will be able to sort new members by their market.
  • And hear about the cool new survey element within Clickfunnels, which is free.

So listen below if you want to know how Superfunnels is going to work and what it will do for you.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody. Welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I’m heading out and I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of tired. It’s funny, people always ask me, “Russell, how do you stay so positive all the time? How do you keep moving? How do you get so much stuff done?” and the honest truth is sometimes I’m tired and sometimes I don’t want to move forward. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to get stuff done. But I do anyway. So I don’t know. There’s your personal development lesson for toward. Just keep moving forward.

There’s a really cool cartoon called Meet The Robinsons, it’s one of my favorites. When my kids were younger, the twins were younger, we used to watch it every day. But the whole message in it is “Keep moving forward. Keep moving forward.” That’s how it is.

Today I’m a little later than normal, it took me a little longer, but I’m done. I’m moving forward, and I actually am excited for today. This is why, last summer, it’s been a long time, we decided that we needed to figure out who was using Clickfunnels and speak to them differently. Because right now we kind of have one message that we shove down everyone’s throat, which has worked but I know there’s a lot of people who haven’t bought or been alienated or whatever because they’re like, “How does Clickfunnels work for me?”

So we messaged a guy on Ryan Levesque’s team. We’ve nicknamed him Survey Steve, he’s awesome. So we had him do a deep dive survey, which if you know much about me, it’s hard for me to go deep on things. Deep dive survey is so stressful for me. I always run really simple ask campaigns. “What’s your number one question about blank?” and that’s it. Whereas Survey Steve, he wanted to go intense and run the ones that Ryan talks about in his book. I was like, “Sweet man.”

So we paid him and ran this intense, crazy thing and came back with all sorts of awesome, juicy data and we were really excited. We were going to try to get this huge new, we’re calling it Superfunnel inside of our office. That’s the code name. The code name is Superfunnel. We were trying to get it done before the Marcus Lemonis thing, then we didn’t. So I kind of put in on the backburner because I have a few things going on in my life, if you haven’t noticed.

So Superfunnel’s been on pause, but it’s in the back of my mind. This is what we have to do. The book launch is coming up in about six weeks and I know that Superfunnel’s got to be done by book launch because people, we’ll get a whole new herd of people coming into Clickfunnels. At that time we just want to make sure this new Superfunnel is done.

So what is aSsuperfunnel. Basically the results from Survey Steve, was we had basically five different, well I think there were seven, but we were able to combine a couple, because they made a lot of sense, but into five markets in Clickfunnels. Each of those markets uses it differently and we needed to speak to those guys differently. And as you know last week we launched the new survey element inside of Clickfunnels, which is the most ninja, amazing thing on planet earth. If you haven’t used it yet, we haven’t talked about it a ton yet, because we’re just letting people use it first and then we’ll start bragging about it in a week or two, but it’s legitimately amazing.

So we’re using that. When the Superfunnels is done you go to Clickfunnels.com, there’ll be a video of me basically saying, “Hey, this is Russell. Welcome to Clickfunnels.” I’ll say something about, “you’ve probably heard about funnels, that’s why you’re here. You’re probably wondering if a funnel is right for me, if so which funnel should I use. Well I don’t know the answer yet either. There’s hundreds of potential funnels. But if you take this quick quiz down below, we’ll find out what funnel is right for you.”

And then I’ll have a training video show you exactly the funnel, how to use it in your business. So they take this survey, click the button, it pops up, the survey element goes through, they take the survey and we identify which of the five markets they are. And then there’s a video. Basically for each of the five submarkets, we’ve found three core funnels that would work out best for them. There’s going to be a video that I’m recording today, of me showing, “If you’re an author, speaker or whatever, these are the funnels I would use, here’s how they work.” Boom, we make a special offer.

“Oh, you’re in retail. These are the funnels I’d use. Here’s your special offer.” “Oh, you’re a ecommerce, here’s the funnels I’d use, here’s your special offer.” And kind of go through them, boom, boom, boom.  Thing by thing.

Anyway, that’s kind of the plan. Somebody just pulled in behind me, but awkwardly blocking me, so I couldn’t back out now. Anyway, if I get shot I’ll tell you to….if something weird happens. We had someone the other day……This lady is literally taking a picture of our office, she’s probably listening to the podcast right now. You can come say hi if you want.

We had someone the other day Facebook live outside the office like, “I’m outside Clickfunnels headquarters.” It’s kind of funny for us to see people excited about our office. Anyway, that’s happening today. So hopefully soon you guys will see Superfunnel, and we call it Superfunnel because it’s not just a survey and five videos, that’s the beginning. There’s a survey and five videos and based on that there’s five different follow-up funnels, there’s five different…..a whole bunch of stuff on the back end. It’s pretty awesome, but that’s kind of what’s happening.

Anyway, I’m getting these done today and then what’s fun, if I get these done today then next week I can spend time actually building funnels, which I haven’t done in a while. I’m so excited. So excited. Anyway, that’s all I got you guys. I’m going to bounce and let you guys go. Think about that in your market, I recommend and encourage you guys to play with the survey element inside of Clickfunnels, it’s free you just gotta go and use the version 2 editor. Click on survey and it’ll work. It’s intense.

It does as much, if not more, than a lot of the software products out there charging two or three hundred bucks a month. You get it for free. Is it okay if we over deliver? Are you guys okay if we over deliver? I just want to make sure you guys are okay with that, if not I can quit, we can quit making features and doing awesome stuff. Alright, thanks you guys. Talk to you soon.

Mar 9, 2017

Let me show you behind the scenes of what I’m doing on my birthday launch.

On this episode Russell talks about doing a Facebook Live presentation of the Follow-up Funnel presentation he did at Funnel Hacking Live for his birthday. He explains why they are doing the Facebook Live presentation and what it means to go all in.

Here are some of the cool things in this episode:

  • What the 3 ways to grow a business are, according to Jay Abraham.
  • Which of those 3 ways Russell has been focusing on and which one he is focusing on now.
  • And find out what else Russell has planned for his birthday.

So listen below to find out how you can be all in, it makes a great birthday present for Russell!

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, this is Russell and guess what today is? Today is my birthday. I’m an old man. Everyone’s like, “Take the day for yourself.” And I will be, but first, what good is a birthday if you can’t use it as a way to sell a whole bunch of stuff. Come on now.

So I’m heading to the office for the next two hours because we got a cool promotion happening and I want to explain the what, the why to you guys so you can see what’s happening.

Alright, so how do I start this? Let’s see….When I was first learning marketing and all this exciting-ness, almost 14 years ago now, it’s fun because I’m learning all these things and I thought they were so cool but I didn’t have a chance to use it. Now I have this cool chance to start using everything.

So Jay Abraham said there’s only 3 ways to grow a business. Way number one, get more customers. Way number two, get those customers to buy more. Way number three, get those customers to buy more often. For me, the first two or three years of my business was all about number one, get more customers and it still is, I’m not, not trying to get more customers. In fact, I’m trying to get a lot more customers. But the primary focus of our business for a long time was way number one, get more customers.

So now,  as we’re moving into two and a half years, moving on three, one of our big conscious decisions is, everything’s working well, we’re still getting a lot of new customers, that’s under control, it’s working, it’s growing. So the way number two now is to get these customers to buy more.  More customers, get them to buy, then get them to buy more often. Those are the three ways.

I’m driving to my office and the school bus is coming and all these kids are running out into the street. Sorry, I just gotta make sure I don’t hit any little kids. Oh, they’re so cute.

Alright, that’s our focus. For us, how do we get our customers to spend more on everything we’re doing? Obviously more often, that’s creating more courses and products and things getting them to buy more often. So that’s always kind of in the mix as well, but its not the core thing. The core thing is number two, getting them to spend more. So for us it’s all about ascension now.

So for those of you guys at Funnel Hacking Live, you saw when I did the Follow-up Funnel presentation, what was the strategy behind that, do you think, outside of just it was really fun and we got to make fun of Infusionsoft, or Confusionsoft and Lowkey pages, we got to take some swings to try to topple the dictator, which I talked about yesterday, which was really fun.

But the main thing was we’re trying to, there’s a lot of things, watch the presentation, there were a lot of subtle importance. Number one is to cause a seed of doubt in any other system besides ours. Number two is show people that email auto-responders are the past. And the new opportunity is Follow-up Funnels, to show them that we are the only people that control the funnels, so that all the stuff we’re doing, that Actionetics is doing. We’re the only company that can do that.

We’re trying to do a whole bunch of things, but when all is said and done the real major goal of that entire presentation was to get people to start spending more, to ascend. To move from a $97 a month plan to a $297 a month plan. And if you look at the last 2 ½ years $97 a month plan is way more money just because the volume of people. I think we’re at 33 thousand active members, we passed this week. So the majority of them, obviously are paying $97. In fact I think 10% are at the $297 level.

So the goal is getting that 10% to 20 and then 20 to 30 and getting people to spend more, Jay Abraham 101. Rule number two, get them to spend more. So that what’s this presentation was about. We did it at Funnel Hacking Live. I think most of you guys were there, saw it. It went crazy and we made a special offer for if you went all in. You can go over there and upgrade. They get a shirt that says, “We are not confusionsoft”, they get stickers that say, “I build funnels.” They got temporary tattoos, they got funnel hacker stickers, they got 15 follow-up funnels, share funnels with their account. A really good offer. And all they do is upgrade.

But what is cool. We did it all on their phones, we had someone at the very beginning of my presentation had everyone hold up their phones, and login into their Clickfrunnels account on the phone. And then when they got to the end pitch, it said, “Hold up your phone again and go to imallin.com” and they go to imallin.com and what happens is there’s a button that says, “Here, see if you’re all in.” and if they’re not all in they saw a picture of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone slapping his face, saying, “Ahh, you’re not in. Click here to upgrade.” They click the upgrade and it automatically upgraded them from $97 to $297.

If they were all in it took them to a page that said, “You are all in.” and they get a bunch of really cool stuff. So that was basically the offer. And we got the majority of the room to go all in, into upgrading and to become full members of our cult-ure. And it was awesome.

So today for my birthday, what we’re doing, we’re streaming that live for the entire world. That presentation, we’re going to try to get everybody to go all in. In fact, this month, even without this promotion I think this month will be the first month that our 297 dollar a month members are worth more to us than the $97 a month. And still it’s a fraction of a percentage, but each member is worth three times as much to us. Maybe it’s after this promotion, anyway, we’re getting close to crossing that, which is one of our big goals, obviously.

So today what we’re doing, we scheduled a Facebook Live on my birthday, starting in 25 minutes, from right now. And in fact, I’m in the office sitting in the car telling you guys this because I’m getting excited to go in there and get all this kicked off. Basically we’ve been promoting, Facebook Live let’s you schedule events now. So you schedule it and promote it and people can subscribe to the event. And I don’t know what happens, I’m assuming Facebook texts you or messages you or something to let you know it’s going live, I hope. So that’s the plan. We promoted hard yesterday, I did a Facebook Live pushing, a pre-facebook Live. I sent emails. Everything trying to get people to subscribe.

The only thing, it doesn’t show you how many people have subscribed unfortunately. Anyway, we’ll figure that out. So we’re going live, and he’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to go on first and we’re using OBS, some new Facebook Live software. It’s basically, hold up a camera and I’ll be talking for 10-15 minutes first, and then I’m going to click play and we’ll play the actual video from the live event so you’ll get the same energy and emotion and everything of us on stage, and then at the end I’ll come back on and make a special offer and push everyone to go all in.

In fact, if you’re listening to this and you want to go in, go to imallin.com. Isn’t that a cool domain name? We had to pay a pretty penny for it. Imallin.com, pretty cool. And then everyone can ascend and upgrade. But I recommend watching the Follow-up Funnel presentation, in fact if you want to just see the presentation I posted it on Followupfunnels.com, you can go there and actually watch it if you miss this, if you want to watch it in the future. Watch the presentation, see how I did, see all the subtleties of what I did and how I did. Why we’re creating an us versus them, how we’re getting people to want to upgrade. We’re causing seeded doubts in all other options beside us. We’re showing, again, it’s not an improvement offer. Notice how we structured it, it’s not improvement, it’s all about new opportunity.

Anyway, there’s a lot of cool things we did, and we’re really proud of the presentation. Even if you don’t go all, which you’d be insane not to. But even if you don’t you’ll learn a lot from watching the presentation and seeing what’s possible. So that’s the game plan. I’m going to go in there and test it out. And hopefully we get half of our members to go all in today and to ascend up and I’m excited. I’s going to be a lot of fun.

And that’s all I got. I appreciate you guys, I’m going to jump in here and go live for my birthday.  Then when I’m done, my wife and I are going on a hot date and I’m done for the rest of the day. Then I’m going to pick my kids up from school and we’re going to goof off and eat junk food and it’s going to be amazing. Then I gotta do scouts tonight. Oh, scout leader. Anyway, it’ll still be fun. So that’s my plan today. All of you guys have a good, celebrate my birthday fun, come hang out with us, come watch our stuff, and we’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Mar 8, 2017

One of the steps in starting your revolution.

In this episode Russell talks about what it means to topple the dictator. He also talks about not being afraid of taking risks and why it’s like jumping off a cliff and making your parachute on the way down.

Here are some fun things in today’s episode:

  • Why sometimes fear gets in the way of us achieving the things we set out to do.
  • How Russell plans on toppling the dictator in his market.
  • And hear how quickly Russell and his wife went from meeting to married, and why he decided to just take the leap.

So listen below to find out who the dictator is and how Russell is going to topple them.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I want to welcome you to Marketing In Your Car. I hope that everyone is doing amazing today. Tomorrow is my birthday, which I’m really excited about and at the same time I’m a little nervous, in a good way. For those of you guys who were at Funnel Hacking Live, well let me step back.

I talk a lot about this, I’m a big believer in first off, competition, which I did a whole podcast on that a little while ago. Most of you guys liked, I had one or two of you who were a little offended, but you know, whatever. But I like to compete. If there’s not something to compete against, then it’s not even fun for me. So it’s like, I gotta find somebody and go and compete towards that, right.

We also talk a lot about the attractive character and creating an us versus them and creating things like that, and it’s funny, last week I was at Dean Graziosi’s affiliate mastermind so everyone who sold his book got to go to this mastermind. Ryan Levesque and I were talking about building mass movements and cult-ure and those things we talk about and he was asking me if I had heard about, I don’t remember the guys name, I’ll have to go back and look at it. I was like, “no.” and he’s like, “you should go study his stuff on that. He talks all about 12 phases in a revolution.” One of them was topple the dictator, that’s a big part of it.

For us it’s like, alright so we can either be nice and just you know, not compete, or compete secretly, or we can bring our entire community in on this and make it a big deal. So of course, I decided to make it a big deal, because that’d be more fun. So the goal in the step here in us building this revolution, the Clickfunnels revolution is toppling the dictator. Who’s the dictator? For us, we had to find a common enemy and it really, right now, which it won’t be after we pass them, but for now it’s Infusionsoft was the common enemy.

At the Funnel Hacking Live event we did, I did a presentation called Follow-up Funnels and we talked about trying to get everyone to be all in. In fact, we bought imallin.com as the domain name that everyone goes to, to say “I’m all in.” And when they’re all in, it means using Clickfunnels and Actionetics, and you’re getting rid of Confusionsoft and Lowkey Pages and all these other things, which is kind of a joke for those who were at the event.

So it’s been fun. What was interesting is that most of the people at the event, most of you guys know, you ran in the back and said you’re all in. You got the t-shirt that said, “We’re not Confusionsoft”, you got the temporary tattoos, you got the “I build funnels” stickers, all these amazing cool things. So while that’s awesome, we wanted to keep that going so tomorrow, on my birthday, we’re going to be doing, we’re going to actually take the presentation from the event and we’re going to Facebook Live it. So not just the 1500 people who were in the room, but potentially hundreds, hopefully at least a hundred thousand people or more are going to see that presentation in the next week or so, which will hopefully get a whole bunch of people to go all in, in Clickfunnels, upgrade to Actionetics and stop dinking around with all these other crappy tools and just using what we’ve built for them.

I’m excited for that, but at the same time it kind of makes you nervous because you’re like, “We’re putting it out there, we’re putting Lowkey Pages and ConfusionSoft out there and I know…..” well, I’m interested, I know I’ll get some annoyed people, especially some of my friends that own these other businesses, and I’m curious what will happen, if they’ll leave and blow it off or if they’ll contact me. Who knows.

The reality is that’s, if you’re going to build a revolution and a cult-ure and all these kind of things, you can hide behind it and not talk about it, or you can make it a big deal and bring your community in on it, and I think it’s more fun to do that.

So anyway, I’m excited for tomorrow. If you haven’t seen that yet, stay tuned and I’m pretty sure I’ll put it on followupfunnels.com or imallin.com, somewhere that presentation will be in case you want to go see it, in case you missed it. You’ll have a chance to see what follow-up funnels are, how it’s the future, we’re no longer talking about email funnels, that was an old opportunity. The new opportunity is follow-up funnels and what’s possible inside of Actionetics, is second to none. So that’s what we’re really excited about.

I’m excited to show it to everybody. With that said, I’m at the office but the other cool thing today is I’m filming. We sold Fill Your Funnel, and I wanted to comment one thing because the podcast I kind of did to recap the event, the one for 40 minutes or something, I talked about how some of the things, follow-up funnels did better than I thought, but Fill Your Funnel didn’t do as well as I thought, it didn’t do bad, for all intents and purposes, it did really, really good. But obviously I always have big goals for myself and what I’m expecting and things like that, and I don’t think it was executed perfectly on my side, which I take total, it’s totally my fault and I’m okay with that. But what’s cool about it is that we still sold over 100 people that got into Fill Your Funnel, which is our new traffic course.

Today I’m actually all dressed up. I’m about to go into the studio and start recording a lot of the products and stuff for that, which is going to be pretty cool. Anyway, I got an email yesterday because I notified everybody that we had a Facebook group and let everybody in and somebody messaged me and said, “Hey Russell, I’m excited for Follow-up, or follow-up…..” Too many funnels, fill your funnel, follow-up funnels, funnel hacks, funnel hacking, funnel hacking live. I gotta get different names. Anyway, they said how excited they were. “Sorry you didn’t sell as many as you hoped for, but we’re really excited to be part of this.”

And I kind of thought for a second, I didn’t want anyone to take what I said as that. That I didn’t sell as many as I hoped for, because that wasn’t what I was frustrated about. I was frustrated about myself and the fact that the presentation was good, but it wasn’t great yet. The cool thing about this, this is why I preach this all the time to everyone. We do our presentations over and over again. That was my first time ever doing that presentation and from it I intimately, when you’re standing in front of 1500 people doing a presentation, you feel the energy of the room really fast.

So I know what parts were slower and sticking points that didn’t get people to move. I know what things did really, really well. And from that I know what tweaks and changes I need to make. So for me, it’s actually a really good thing. I did it and now it’s like, now I did it, now I know what changes and tweaks I need to make and then that presentation, after I perfect it, that’ll be something we use for forever. It’ll bring hundreds of people a month for hopefully the next ten years or more.

So don’t feel bad, it was a learning experience, I was just frustrated at myself. But now that I’ve done it, now I can perfect it and I can change it. So for a lot of you guys who, I think a lot of us get stuck in the fear mode. I’ve gotta bad habit that has helped me, luckily, serve you well. I’m not that good at planning and preparing something like that, so usually I set a deadline and then all the sudden it’s like, “Oh crap, the deadlines here, we gotta go.” And then I’ll pull an all-nighter and we just do it. And half the time it doesn’t do well and half the time it does awesome. I say it’s more than half the time. The majority of the time it doesn’t do well the first time.

But what’s cool, I just did it. It’s like I just jumped off the cliff and then on the way I’m building the parachute trying to figure it out and then we land and we’re like, “huh, that hurt. I broke my leg, but now that the parachutes built I can go do it again.” Then you jump off and you perfect the parachute every single time. Does that analogy make any sense? I don’t even know if it does.

So that’s kind of the concept as a whole. Hopefully, don’t anyone feel bad for me, but hopefully it motivates you to be like sweet, I can do that. I’m going to jump off a cliff and my first webinar is going to crash and burn or it’s going to do okay. But I can’t fix it until I know what’s wrong. So I have to get rid of that fear that’s holding me back and just run off the cliff and jump. The better you get at that, the better you’ll be in life. The better your business. If you look at everything that’s been meaningful in life.

I think about my marriage, yeah that was scary to get married. But I was like, I love her so, alright let’s go. And we ran and jumped off the cliff. Maybe this is, in Mormon time it’s a little different, but I met my wife on Halloween, so October. We hung out at the house a few times, and then in January we went on our first date. April we were engaged, and August we were married. So it was less than a year from meeting.

And I was so annoyed, the timeline. Because I was like, I went on a date in January, by March we should be engaged or something, what’s taking so long? It wasn’t until April until it was like definitely. On my side it was like, “I’m ready to jump off the cliff.” And she’s like “I don’t know. You’re a kid.” It’s funny, she asked some of my friends, “Do you think Russell will be able to support me if we get married?” It’s kind of funny looking back now.

But there’s fear right? So most of have so much fear, we wait and wait and wait and miss out on these amazing things and it’s like, I think I’ve become really good at like, “I want that thing. I’m scared, but I want it more.” So I just run and jump. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever cliff jumped or whatever. It’s like the longer you stand up there the harder it is. It’s easiest to get up there and be like, “I’m scared…” and you just jump. I think in most things in life, that’s what we gotta become better at. Just letting fear go away and just looking at what we want and then running and jumping.

And typically you’re going to get beat up and bruised from the fall, but after you made that jump you’re like, “That wasn’t that bad. My parachute’s half built now. I’m going to do it. This time I’ll actually be done by the time I’m finished.” And then it just gets better and better and better.

So that’s what I got today. Hope that helps you guys. I’m going to go in and film some stuff for our Fill Your Funnel members. We’re going to start filling our funnels with amazing prospects of people who want to give you money, who you can serve and it’s going to be awesome. Thanks everybody, we’ll talk to you soon.

Mar 7, 2017

This is the reason why many of us, including me, often fall short of truly changing people’s lives.

On today’s episode Russell talks about struggling with his need to perfect his book as he’s reading it for the audiobook version. He remembers struggling with it 2 1/2 years ago when doing the same thing with Dotcom Secrets book and how that has helped work through it this time.

Here are some of the cool things you’ll hear in this episode;

  • Why Russell struggled to do the audiobook version of the Dotcom Secrets book, and how that is helping him get through it with the Expert Secrets book.
  • What Russell learned from listening to Brian Tracey onstage versus a Brian Tracey audiobook that was too perfect.
  • And why sometimes we should let our perfections go because that might be keeping us from changing others lives.

So listen below to find out why Russell struggles so much doing the audiobook versions of his books.

---Transcript---

Good morning everybody, it’s Monday, well at least for me. Who knows when you’ll listen to this. But even if it’s not Monday, treat it like it’s Monday because it’s going to be amazing today. I am actually on my way to go record the last half of the Expert Secrets book for audiobook format.

It’s interesting, I don’t know how many of you guys have done it before, but I remember the Dotcom Secrets book, when it was done we were planning the launch, everything was happening. And all the sudden the week before I was like, “Wait a minute, what if we did an order form bump that was the audiobook? That’d be the coolest thing in the world.” So then I was like, how do you make an audiobook? So I tried to start recording it myself, and that didn’t work.  So I’m like, there’s gotta be recording studios that do this kind of thing.

So I search around, there’s this dude in Boise who has a recording studio for bands, but I don’t think we’re in the era where bands record a lot of stuff anymore or whatever. So anyway, I hired him to do the book and it was awesome, kind of. Well, it turned out awesome for those that got the audiobook version. But a couple of things, because I forgot the mental turmoil that I went through. So the problem is he said normally people spend a week recording an audiobook but I had to do it all in one day because I was in a huge time crunch.

So I started trying to do the whole book in a day, which had a lot of pain associated with it because it just took so long. And it was tiring and it was, I was trying to keep my energy level up because I didn’t want people listening and each chapter getting tired-er and tired-er with me. So I was doing all sorts of stuff to keep me awake and alert, which was really hard. Honestly, there’s a lot of pain associated with that first book.

And the other thing that is interesting, first half of the Dotcom Secrets book is written like a story so it sounds really well. Then the last half it’s like examples and things that don’t make sense as an audiobook. So I recorded it and I remember as I’m doing that whole thing, it made me really self conscious about the book because I was like, these don’t sound awesome. The first half of the book sounded cool, but these parts, me telling the script and plugging in examples, it just doesn’t work unless you’re reading it.

So I did it, but what’s interesting is when it was done, I was, and I forgot about this until Friday when I started recording this version, but I forgot how self conscious when it came to the book while I was recording the audiobook version. It was this weird mind thing where I was like, this book is not very good. Because I don’t think it’s that good as an audiobook. But because of that, I never, after that was the last time I read the book, was when I did the audiobook. I put it on a shelf and I never read it.

Then we launched it, literally a week later and sold, I think last we checked it was like 79 thousand copies, so we’re getting close to one hundred thousand copies, which is awesome. And I’ve had insane amounts of people tell me that the book changed their life and changed their perspective on things and helped them understand marketing and sales and funnels. It did it’s job and I’m really proud of it. Really, really proud of it.

What’s funny is that I know that as we’re approaching our next book launch, there was things I wanted to clean up in the book, and most of them are things that I remember came to my head during the audiobook version, things that bugged me back then. So last week when I was flying to Arizona on Wednesday I got the old book out and I was highlighting all the stuff I wanted to change. And as I was reading it I was like, “Man, this book…” I probably shouldn’t say this about your book, it’s not very humble, “This book is really good.” I was really proud of it, even though there’s things I want to change and tweak or whatever, but I was really proud of it.

And I forgot. I was like, “Man, I haven’t read this in a long time, I forgot about it.” And then Friday I went in to read the Expert Secrets book I started getting this, I was sitting in the exact same chair, in the exact same room, exact same everything as the Dotcom Secrets book. And the first part of the book is similar. It reads like a story, so it, I was liking it. But then I got to the parts that are similar, where it’s like I’m taking the power point slides and I’m plugging in all the stuff. And it doesn’t read good as an audiobook that way. So I started becoming more and more self conscious as I was reading it.

I spent probably 6 or 7 hours in the studio recording the book and by the time I left, I was a wreck, my whole brain was just second guessing the book, is it any good? Maybe it’s not any good? What if people don’t like this because it doesn’t make sense this way? And all the sudden as I was sitting at home I was laying there, after I think my wife went to bed. I think I was watching Shark Tank or something because I was hopped up on enough caffeine to give me energy to read the book and I couldn’t fall asleep.

I was sitting there and stressing out and then I was just like “Huh, I kind of remember this from 2 ½ years ago when I did it with the Dotcom Secrets book, and I remember how much I second guessed the book and  I didn’t even want to sell it after I finished the audiobook. But we did it anyway because I was like I can’t do anything, I just have to put it out there. I kind of feel the same way about the Expert Secrets book. And this time luckily it broke up into two days, otherwise it would have been even worse. That’s why I’m going back to do the last. I probably got 68 percent of it done on Friday and I’m going to do the last 40 today.

It’s just funny how much you second guess yourself. And I started thinking about all the products I’ve created in the last 14 years, and the interesting thing is I’ve never gone back and watched any of the products ever. And I think that the problem that some of us have, is that we do. You put your heart and your soul into something and when you’re creating it, you know it’s right. When I was working on the book I was like, “I know this is right. I know.” I felt right about it and then when I went back for the book version, its me doing the audiobook, you start second guessing yourself because you’re like, “Ah, I didn’t say that right. I should have said it this way. “ So much of this stuff floods into your mind that if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s being published, it’s being printed, the launch date’s happening, all these things, I probably would just pull the plug.

“You know what? Screw it, I hate this book.” Just running away. Luckily the wheels are in motion just like the Dotcom Secrets book, I couldn’t do anything about it. The Dotcom Secrets book we were giving away a Ferrari, there were no if, ands, or buts. This is happening whether I liked it or not. The same thing with this and I’m grateful for that because I think a lot of us, we record something and we go back and listen to it, and then you second guess yourself and you cancel this thing that could have been life changing for somebody else.

So I would recommend for a lot of you guys, first off, if you’re editing your own videos or audio, I bet that’s hard. I luckily have no skills or talents, so I’m not able to do that, but if I could I can imagine how I would be stressing out and trying to cut our every cough or hiccup and everything. I would be trying to make it perfect, whereas the perfection is often times what kills the project or what takes the soul out of it.

You know Marketing In Your Car, you’ve guys have heard me sneeze, you’ve heard me almost kill squirrels, I even got pulled over once, or at least almost pulled over multiple times. But that rawness of it is what makes it intriguing. I think sometimes we try to perfect it so much that it loses it. I remember I was listening to a Jay Abraham course back in the day and it’s the first time I remember hearing Brian Tracey and I was listening to this presentation of him on stage and I was like, “Dude, this guy is captivating.” Everything was amazing about it. I was like I want to learn everything Brian Tracey. So I went online and to Ebay and bought every Brian Tracey course known to man, and the first one I plug in and it’s Brian in the studio reading a book and I was like, I listened for probably an hour and I was like, this is horrible. I just turned it off and I’ve never listened to Brian Tracey since, which is sad because the first experience with him live in front of people, there are flaws and things and it was amazing.

In fact, it’s interesting, everyone is obsessed with audiobooks, and I like audiobooks, but if you look at what I listen to, this morning while I was working out I was not listening to a course of Dan Kennedy onstage. Because there’s something, I like people’s energy on Stage much better than their energy reading a book in a studio, typically. That’s why I’ve tried to keep, in fact that’s one big reason why I read my own audiobook, as opposed to everyone else was like, “Don’t read your own audiobook, hire someone else to do it for you.”  because of the pain I’m going through now, but I was like “Then you’ve got some dude reading a book to you. At lease when I’m doing it I’m able to use my own voice inflections and talk the way I would speak to somebody more personally and have a little more fun with it.

But there’s something about live, so I would just say, the  reason why I’m sharing any of this, in fact, I think sharing my mental battles I have with myself over my own content is the same thing all of you guys are dealing with. And I would just recommend to, if I was most of you, don’t ever go watch your course after you do it. Let the people speak. Because you’re going to be so, at least for me, I’m so critical of myself, I would hat everything.

I literally, if I went back to every podcast I would edit out every stutter, which I just did three of them right there in a row. I would edit out every cough, every sneeze, edit everything and then it would become this perfect thing and you guys wouldn’t connect to it. I just think it’s important to pull yourself out of the editing of the content if you are the content creator, because I think sometimes because of our perfectionism, that we like and we expect of our own stuff, it will actually keep you from creating what will give people the lasting change that they had made.

So I hope that helps somebody who’s stuck in that part of it right now like I was and have been and am in often. With that said, I’m going to wrap this, for a couple of reasons. One, it’s kind of the end of the thought. Two, I’m about to get on the freeway and I have no idea exactly where I’m going, I’m really bad at directions, so I gotta turn GPS on my phone. I should have just done the episode with GPS on and you guys could have heard every two minutes, “Turn left here. In one quarter mile, turn right.” But anyway, I didn’t do that, so you guys missed out.

Anyway, I’m going to bounce, appreciate you guys all, have an amazing day and don’t be perfection, don’t try to be perfect in your content. Just create stuff and put it out there because I think perfection is the number one thing that’ll kill your ability to change your customer’s lives. With that said, appreciate you guys and I’ll talk to you soon.

Mar 6, 2017

Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics can mean everything in your business.

On today’s episode Russell shares the difference between tactics and strategy after an attendee at Funnel Hacking Live complained about the content of day one. He tells why strategy is the key and tactic is just an element.

Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:

  • Why an attendee at Funnel Hacking Live was unhappy with day one at the event, and why he’s not seeing the gold Russell has given him.
  • Why it’s important to know the difference between tactics and strategy.
  • And how if you follow an overall strategy, the tactics will still be there, but you can earn 15x more money.

So listen below to hear what someone else had to say about Funnel Hacking Live, and why Russell thinks he’s wrong.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I am out taking the garbage out, Sunday night. And it’s a beautiful night, a little chilly, but looking out there’s a really cool ski hill called Bogus Basin here in Idaho. Anyway, where my house is at and I’m taking garbage out, I go out and I can see the mountain and the mountain is all dark and where the ski hill is, is all lit up and looks insanely cool. So that’s kind of fun right now.

But I had a quick message for you guys because I just wanted to make sure everyone’s paying attention. Because I feel like sometimes you can show people gold. Be like, “Hey, here’s gold. You want some?” and the smart people see that and they’re like, “Oh sweet.” And they take it. And there’s other people who say, “That’s not real gold. I didn’t want gold. I wanted platinum. I came for diamonds, why are you trying to give me gold.” I’m like, “Dude, there’s gold. You can sell it and buy diamonds.”

So let me explain this metaphor. Funnel Hacking Live last week, insane. Those of you there, you know, you experienced it. It was just amazing. And we’re starting planning next year’s and I think I finally figured out a way, took me three days, but I think I figured out a way to make it better than last time. I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to try. That’s going to be in time, I got a year to plan it, so that’s going to be sweet.

But it was an awesome event and of the three days, day one was probably my favorite day because I think what I got to share got me most excited. I shared the first section of the book, which is how to build a mass movement. Went into all the strategy and the tactics behind how to do that. I wanted to break those out, because there’s two different things, strategy and tactics. Then I had a chance to go into the story. We talked about epiphany bridge stories. I showed the strategy and tactics behind that. Then Brandon and Kaelin spoke the first day. Jim Edwards spoke the first day, it was awesome. All the days were good, but the first day was, I was most excited about what I taught the first day.

Anyway, that was good, I thought. For those who were there, it was good right? Pretty amazing? It’s basically a year, more than a year, deep year of my thought, what I’ve been trying to really show and teach and coach everybody through. And what the new book’s going to be really going deep into. So it was also a big preface for the Expert Secrets book which is coming out April 18th. So anyway, most people were there and they got that and went and ran away with it. But then one of my buddies, one of my friends showed me the other day some post that one of the guys at the event posted in his private members area.

I know who this guy is, I’ve been watching him for a while, he’s been doing some cool things. But his business isn’t that big yet,  he’s kind of……I won’t make fun of him publicly, I might later. We’ll stop for now. In his members group he posted, he said, “Day one of Funnel Hacking Live was stupid. Not a single tactic was taught. Blah, blah, blah.” Dropped like 5 or 6 F-bombs in this thing. I was just like, I’m glad it was after the event, because I would have called the dude out on stage and embarrassed him in front of everyone, which would have been amazing. I kind of wish I had that now.

But instead I saw it like two days ago. I was like, “What? Day one?” It’s funny, day two he came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m joining your Inner Circle, man. This has changed my life.” Did the whole thing. By the afternoon day two he had a change of heart, but after day one he was frustrated apparently because I didn’t teach enough tactics.

So a couple of things. First off, what you must understand is that tactics are good. Tactics are like the tricks you use to do things. But tactics in and of themselves are not that powerful. In fact, I think, when I first met Jay Abraham and Rick Shephard and the guys, they used to talk about this. Talk about how strategy is more important than tactics, and I used to think that were not smart. Because I’m like, “No, these tactics, these tricks, these tools, these things are the secret.” And as I’ve gotten older, in my old age, and I’ve shifted from being stuck at 2 or 3 million dollars a year, to shifting to 30 million dollars a year and beyond. Hopefully this year we’ll hit 80 or 90 million, and mass growth. Bigger than anyone I know of in our industry.

The big differentiation that took me from 2 or 3 million dollars a year to ten time that, it wasn’t the next tactic. It was the strategy, the strategy behind it. As I’m on stage teaching how to build a mass movement, I’m talking about the strategy of how you build a mass movement. This is how you get people to follow you, this is how I went from 3 million dollars, to two years later 30 million dollars in a year. The difference was not a magic tactic. And I showed tactics, I showed the different tactics, but it was the core strategy. When you understand the strategy there’s a lot of tactics inside of it, but understand the strategy is the key.

So we’re showing the strategy to everybody and I’m just hoping that you guys weren’t like this dude looking at this gold and being like, “but I came here for diamonds.” Dude, are you kidding me, take the gold I give you and go sell it and buy some diamonds if that’s what you really want. Don’t miss out on the lesson because you came thinking you were looking for something else. If there’s someone that’s showing you something, don’t be like….I was the same way. So I’m throwing myself as being guilty of this too. When I first talked to Shephard and Abraham, those guys who were way ahead of me strategically thinking, I used to make fun of them thinking they were dumb. Just like this guy was doing for me. I’m like, no when I understood it; I respected and understood that I gotta figure out the strategy.

The tactics are always there, the tactics will fit inside of any strategy, but the strategy is the key. That’s what expands your growth. And then, come on now, epiphany bridge story, the hero’s two journeys, that’s all tactical. Come on now. I’ll leave that there.

What I wanted to talk about is, as I was thinking through this, is I want to kind of tie in the tactic and strategy and all that kind of stuff. When I got started, whenever it was, 14 years ago, my first mentor was Mark Joyner, he always told me, “You gotta build a list, you gotta build a list.” Which is a strategy right. At the time there were a whole bunch of different strategies people were chasing. There was AdSense stuff, The was Google AdWords, there was Arbitros, there were all these different ways to make money. And Mark was my first mentor and luckily I listened to him by the shiny objects flying around me like crazy. So I started building a list, building a list, like he told me to.

And I did that and it was funny, a couple years later Mike Filsaime came out with, he kind of coined this originally, a lot of people say it since, but the first time I heard it, it was from Mike. He said, “You should average one dollar per month, per name on your email list.” I was like, okay, that’s a cool metric. I started looking back at what I was doing and it was interesting how close my business at that point had followed that. I had a thousand people on my list, I was making about a thousand a month, when I had ten thousand on my list I made ten thousand a month, when I had a hundred thousand on my list I was making a hundred thousand a month. It was eerie. Is that a word? How close that number stayed.

For me, I started focusing on the strategy is building a list. What are the tactics to build a list? I kept focusing on tactic, tactic, tactic to build a list. My list kept growing and my income would grow with it, but I didn’t have the huge shift. When we started shifting, I was telling this, last week, I can’t remember if I told you guys this or not. Dean Graziosi did this big book launch and he invited the top ten or fifteen affiliates to his office. So I flew down there Thursday and hung out, it was amazing. It was an amazing group. I could go on for days about all the people and what I learned. I got some amazing stuff that I will show you guys in the next few months. If you watch, you’ll see some of the stuff I learned from that group.

But what was interesting is, when I got there to talk, they wanted me to talk 30 minutes on whatever I thought was the biggest, most impactful thing in my business over the last few months. What did I share with them? I shared building a cult-ure. I talked about the three things. The thing I talked about first session of our group, we talked about charismatic leader, future based cause, and then new opportunity, which is the key. That’s the core strategy. What’s interesting is, I wasn’t planning on talking but when I got up on stage, I don’t know if you’ve done this when you’ve gotten on stage. Things pop into your head sometimes, so I got up in front of this group and the first thing that popped into my head was the Send out Cards event I went to 7, 8  or 9 years ago.

I remember going to this event all excited to learn network marketing and see how these guys do everything. And I was confused when I got there, to be honest. Nobody taught anything. I remember, the first day they gave awards to almost everyone in the group and they had people win cars, they had recognition, told stories, people crying about how sending cards changed their lives. And it was so confusing to me. I remember afterwards sitting there talking to David Frey, he probably doesn’t even remember this, but it had a huge impact on me. I was like, “Dude, nobody taught anything.” And he said, “You know what the craziest thing is Russell? They’re a software company. That’s it. They’re a software, but what have they done different? What was the strategy?” The tactic is how to build a software company, but what is the strategy? He didn’t say that, but I was thinking what is the strategy?

And we started talking and he said, “They’re a software company, but look what they built around it, it’s a movement. There’s people, this is a way of life for people now.” And I was thinking about it, send out cards, I love the guys who own that, it’s a cool company, but their software is not that good. There are thousands of better card editors out there. But they built a movement of people and that’s why that company did so well.

So when I was launching Clickfunnels that kept ringing in my head from David Frey. They’re just a software company. I’m like, “I’m building a software company.” I could have gone, what’s the tactic to build a software company. No, step back. What’s the strategy? How do these guys do it? They didn’t say, let’s build a software company. That wasn’t what they were doing; they were looking at the strategy of it. So as we launched Clickfunnels, I knew we were going to compete against, Infusionsoft, Leadpages, and all these crappy software products, and I was like, I don’t want this to become a battle of who’s got what feature. I want to build a movement. I want people, I want to build the best software in the world, and luckily I’ve got the partners that are able to do that, which is insanely cool.

But I was like. Even if our software sucked, I still gotta out market everyone else.  Because I want them to follow us because we’re a movement, not because we’re a software company. If you were at Funnel Hacking Live, you remember Ryan
Montgomery, our CTO, he got up there and said, “hey guys, we’re not a technology company, we’re a marketing company. We’re building technology, the technology behind it to make us be able to market, which gives you the ability to market.”

That’s the big differentiator, that’s why we’re taking on the SASS companies that are fighting us on features and we’re thrashing them because we’re building a movement. And that’s the strategy. So I started looking at that, and I looked at our numbers over the last two years, and what’s funny, is for 8 years in my business, our metrics were one dollar per name per month on our list. And I look at our numbers now and I gotta do the math real quick in my head. But we are closer to probably 14 or 15 dollars per name per month on our email list. So we 15x’d it. Same people, same list building tactics to get people in, but the strategy shifted. What happened when we shifted the strategy? 15x, instead of one dollar per name per month on our email list, we make $15 per name per month on our email address, by shifting the strategy and the strategy was how do we build a movement? We’re not a software company, we’re building a movement.

I wanted people coming to Clickfunnels like they came to Send out Cards on stage crying because they send a card and it changed someone’s life. I don’t want them coming and talking about how much money they made. That’s the difference.

I just wanted to share that because I know sometimes we get caught up in what’s the new tactic. Some of my close friends are running an event this weekend coming up, and the difference, you go to that event and what do they do. There’s all these people on stage sharing tactics, and some people love that, but that’s not what wins wars. Tactics are the gun and the shot gun and rifle that you go out there, but if you got a bad strategy you’re going to lose.

So take a step back, look at the strategy and understand that, and hopefully this helps you understand the difference between strategy and tactics. How the tactics are good, but you switch to strategy and get that correct, 15x growth, going from 3 million to 30 million in  24 months. What’s the difference? It’s not changing my tactics, the tactics were all the same, it was the strategy behind it.

I hope that you guys get that. With that said, my fingers are freezing. I should have worn gloves out here. I’m going back inside. Appreciate you all, tomorrow I’m going to go finish…..Friday I spent the whole day recording the audio version of the Expert Secrets book and tomorrow I’m going to finish the last third. I drive out there, I have a message I want to share with you guys, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. Thanks everybody, have a great night and we’ll talk to you guys soon.

Mar 3, 2017

The rest of the story…

On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event.

Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode:

  • An overview of the schedule during the 3 day event, who spoke, and what they spoke about.
  • How Russell felt about certain speakers and what he thinks went right with his own presentations, and what mistakes he feels he made.
  • What the best part of the event was for Russell (hint – It involves his lovely wife).
  • And what Russell plans on doing differently at next year’s Funnel Hacking Live.

So listen below for the conclusion of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017.

---Transcript---

Day number two now, Devon got on stage he intro to government estate. Then we came up and did a section on follow-up funnels. Which was Todd and Dylan and Ryan and me and we talked about how email funnels are from 1998 and the future is follow up funnels. And we did a presentation and during the presentation we ripped our shirts off and we had these shirts. I’m actually wearing the shirt today. It says, “We are not confusion soft, we’re Clickfunnels” and then we challenged everybody to go all in and be all in, in Clickfunnels. And we gave them these t-shirts and temporary tattoos and a whole bunch of stuff for anyone who went all in.

Basically they had to open up their phone and go to imallin.com and if you’re not all in it had Macauley Culkin slapping his face saying, “ahh, you’re not in.” and there was a big button where you could upgrade. And if you were all in, it showed you were all in and basically you’d run to the back of the room, show them the funnel and then we’d give you a huge packet of swag, which was cool.

So if any of you guys are listening to this. Don’t do that right now. We’re updating it to make it work online, I think by next week. Actually my birthday, March 8th. So on my birthday we’re going to be doing that presentation live to Facebook Live and it’ll be live so you can all go all in and get the same swag shipped out to you, which will be fun. But it was cool to show people what’s possible in Actionetics. Most people don’t know, they assume it’s an email auto-responder, and that’s like saying that Clickfunnels builds websites. Come on now, that’s 1998.

I had a slide, I wanted to use Urkel, Steve urkel in my slides, and I was able to use him twice. I was like, “You know what else was cool in 1998, Steve Urkel. Actually no, Steve Urkel’s show was cancelled in 1998. So even in 98 Urkel wasn’t cool anymore. But that’s what you’re using if you’re doing email funnels. We’re talking about follow-up funnels and all the stuff that’s possible.” So we showed people what’s possible in Actionetics, and most people didn’t even know. And everyone is shifting everything over to Clickfunnels, which is the goal. We want everybody all in, I want you all in.

So that was what Follow-up Funnels is about. It was probably the coolest presentation. So much energy, it was awesome. Then we had a break after that. And then Justin and Tara Williams came on and did a whole section on podcast funnels, which was awesome. They told their story, which was cool. And basically showed how these three podcasts they had done, how these three podcasts had each launched three entire businesses for them and it was just cool to see.

Anyway, that part was awesome. So podcast funnels, Justin and Tara were amazing. They killed it. After that we had Emily Shay come up and she is 11 years old and she stood up there on a huge stage where most people would be so scared and so intimidated and she crushed it. She was so awesome. She had about 15 or 20 minutes up there and she told her story and did it in a really fun way that tied it to the audience. She’s just a superstar. Some people would say the youth speakers were the best one’s of the whole thing, and I was like, “Yes.”

So Emily crushed it. Caleb Maddix came on, I talked about him yesterday on the podcast. He came on and just did an amazing job as well. And it was just so cool to see Emily and Caleb, two young entrepreneurs who were able to stand in front of a room and control the audience like that. For me, it took me honestly, it took me ten plus years to get a spot that they were in already and it was just so cool to see them. They’re the future.

So exciting, so they both crushed it and did such an amazing job. Then we had a lunch break. Again, the annoying thing where our stomachs were hungry and we had to go eat. So everyone went to lunch. We came back and Trey Lewellen stood up on stage and Trey is really, Trey spoke at the very first Funnel Hacking Event and he did a great job then. But it’s fun seeing him transition, him owning the stage now, he just, he did awesome. He went into deep funnelytics, like here’s the metrics you’ve got to figure out to make your funnels works. And he showed this stuff where it’s just like, well I didn’t understand that. Most people who set up a funnel that doesn’t make a million bucks day one they’re like, “This didn’t work.” No, you gotta understand the math behind it. And Trey showed how he’s built these huge companies. 20-30 million dollar companies off of a funnel that was not profitable upfront.

But when you understand the funnelytics, the math behind the funnels, how it worked. It was so cool for him to document and show it all off, it was just amazing.

Then from there, we’re only halfway through, it just keeps getting, the whole thing was amazing. Then Jason Fladlien, who is someone I’ve learned, in fact in the Expert Secrets book, I dedicated a lot to him as well. Because there’s so much I learned from him about breaking belief patterns and rebuilding and reframing and he’s just brilliant. He got on stage and talked about Amazon Funnels. And even though a lot of people know him as the guy who’s the best in the world at selling from webinars, he happens to also be good at Amazon as well.

So he showed 7 different Amazon funnels that he uses in his company and then he gave everybody at the event. “Here’s the Amazon funnels, there’s 7 of them. You guys can knock them off and use them in your business.” Which was so cool. So if you’re using any Amazon or ecommerce stuff, Jason’s stuff was amazing.

From there Darrin Stevens got on stage. A lot of you guys probably don’t know Darrin Stevens but he is a legend. He was one of the, he did the marketing behind Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Brilliant book launch and stuff like that. But he also runs events. He does these events that have 80 people in the room who make 2-3million dollars in a weekend, for a room of less than 100 people. And it’s all about how he structures his events and event funnels. So he walked us through the whole process and he had 18 or 19 things that he does at events to build rapport and get people buying. If I was able to close what Darrin does, again he did what did I say, 2.5 million dollars from 80 people. I would have done like 60 million dollars from this event, but I didn’t so Darrin is still the king. He’s amazing.

So he shared event funnel stuff, which was awesome. Then we had another break, then Setema got on stage, and Setema is the Super Bowl winner who had to sell his ring because after he won the Super Bowl his life kind of fell apart and talks about how you win again. How do you get that stuff back? How do you implement all the stuff you’ve learned? It was amazing. He’s nicknamed himself the reverend of the revolution. I feel like he was the reverend preaching to us about how to take this stuff and have success with imperfect action and just going through and doing it. It was so cool, Setema is the man. That was awesome.

After that we came onstage and we awarded the Two Comma Club awards, which was amazing. We had, I think right now, we have over 100 people who have qualified for the Two Comma Club. Which means they have a funnel that made at least a million dollars. 100 people! So we gave away I think 80 something Two Comma Club trophy’s. These huge trophy’s with a gold record on it with two commas etched into it. It was cool for everyone else to see that and be like, “Wow, these are my peers. And they’re all making a million dollars in a funnel.”

I was trying to make it so real. If they can do it, you can do it. So we did that, and afterwards I did a presentation called “You’re one Funnel Away.” Which basically I had no power point slides, I just told the story of all the ups and downs in my business and the funnels that have saved me. I talked about the two or three times I’ve almost gone bankrupt. I talked about the fears, the pain, all that kind of stuff. What were the funnels we created that saved us from that.

It was emotional, I started crying, which is really embarrassing, especially on stage. Other people were crying and it was cool. I hope people enjoyed that. It was a scary thing for me to get vulnerable like that, but I think it was important so that everyone understands, whatever you’re struggling at, it happens to all of us. It happens to me, it happens to everyone. So understanding that and being okay with it and giving yourself permission through that to be able to succeed.

That was really cool. After that we had a hack-a-thon at night. I was super tired. I went to the hack-a-thon, talked for a few minutes, then I went back up, ate some dinner and then passed out because I was so tired. But then I hadn’t finished my next presentation for the next night. So I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning, the next morning to get started.

Hack-a-thon was awesome, people were up til midnight building funnels. We had a whole bunch of people who built, launched and made money on funnels that night, which was cool. We catered dinner again, which was cool. Then the next day, the last day, which was Thursday.

So the last day we came in, Devon brought everyone in, brought the energy high. Then Garrett White and his wife, Danielle and their kids were going to come to the stage and when the event started we couldn’t find them anywhere. I was like, “Where’s Garrett? Where’s Danielle?” We started freaking out. I was totally stressing out and we’re trying to Vox them and text them and call them and nothing. And finally Melanie found out what room number they were in, so Dave ran up and knocked on the door like, “Ahhh, we’re on stage trying to announce you, where are you guys.” It was a miscommunication, we had told them the wrong, we messed up on our side.

But they came down and during that time it was fun because Devon was able to invent a new secret handshake for all funnel hackers, out of necessity. He bought ten minutes time by inventing a new secret handshake, which all of you who have been to Funnel Hacking Live know the secret handshake. Don’t show to those who were not there. They’ll have to learn it at next year’s event. But we’ve got a secret handshake now that is so cool. In fact, I should add a chapter to the Expert Secrets book about secret handshakes, that would be cool.

Anyway, we got a secret handshake and then Garrett, Danielle and their two kids came on stage and gave a presentation that was, I don’t even know what to say, it was so amazing. It was so cool. I’m just going to leave it at that. It was something where if you were in the room you felt it and you heard it and it moved you. It was amazing. So there you go.

Maybe someday we’ll do a launch like warrior funnels .com and share all the presentations of Garrett throughout the Funnel Hacking Live events because they have just been amazing Anyway, who knows, but we’ll look at that. So then we had after they got done. I came up and did a presentation called fill your funnel, which is how to make it rain. How to get people into your funnels. And this was the only presentation where I actually sold-sold. We were selling things throughout the event and I’ll talk about this at the end, but this is the only one where I did the actual presentation.

It went good, but a couple of weird things. When I got on stage after Garrett, there was so much energy from Garrett and Danielle and it was amazing. I came on immediately afterwards and the audio/video guys didn’t turn the music on, so I got up there and it was just kind of a weird transition. And then we awarded Stu and Amy their checks for World Teacher Aide, which was the quarter of a million bucks, which was awesome. Then it was my chance to get up there and teach affiliate funnel and we sold a course called fill your funnels. And just something about that, I don’t know what it was. Something about the presentation was kind of off. I’m just going to be completely honest. I had numbers in my head of what I thought I was going to do and I didn’t do that. It did well, if I told you guys how many we sold, everyone else would think I was a selfish kid and rude.

It did well, but what I expected, and there was this, I was doing it, I couldn’t get the flow right.  I don’t know if it was, part of it I think was because I worked on the presentation the week earlier, then that morning I woke up at 4:30 trying to get it done and I was tired and worn out. There was something about the energy that wasn’t quite right. I think it was good, but it wasn’t great, like I wanted it to be. But at the end of it we sold, and it was awkward. I’m like, in the pitch, “This is hard selling you guys through my perfect webinar, even though I’ve trained all you guys on it and most of you guys are doing it now. It’s like, I’m doing it onstage live. It’s funny how that works.”

But it did well, that was when had breaks, we had snack breaks. And then basically we had to clear the whole audience out, secret service came through for Tony Robbins group, swept the whole thing and then Tony was onstage and I was in the back super nervous and awkward and worried. It’s so different, because with Marcus when he came, he just showed up in his own Uber, it was laid back, he hung out with the crowd, it was really easy and laid back. And Tony was the opposite of that. He had his security detail of 10 or 15 people there who were like, swept all the chairs making sure there were no bombs or guns and we had check people as they came through.

I was in the back and they had to pull us all out so he could come in. Very intense and caused anxiety and nerves and all this stuff, that was nervous. Plus, I found out Tony was throwing up before he came. So he wasn’t feeling good. So much stress. He brought Tony into this little green room and they let us come in and he came out. It went from this nerve, all the nerves, it was like an hour of this, while we were waiting for him to get here. All the nerves and fear and anxiety. What if he’s sick and he can’t speak? What if people don’t get what, they were so excited for him to be there. Secret service security was honestly kind of frustrating because it just. You know how I am, I’m so laid back, it was beyond corporatey, it was secret service, military. Which is good, he needs that, I understand that. But it was just kind of, at first we were trying to make this cool experience and it was so hard.

And then again, Tony came in and did his thing in the green room and came out and came to us and we had moment before he got on stage where he just kind of came in and gave me a hug, and gave my wife, Collette, a hug. And Dylan and Todd and their wives, he just connected personally with us at a level. I was so grateful for that, because it just made all the stress and everything go away. It was like, it’s going to be okay. Tony’s here, he’s going to do what he does, and he’s the best in the world and everyone’s going to love it. I’m not going to stress and I’m going to let it happen and it was cool.

Normally, I guess they don’t let people introduce him, but I was like, “I would love to introduce Tony, there is a reason why I wanted him here and I want everyone to know that reason.” So they let me introduce Tony and I got all choked up during the introduction. But I was talking about how in his bio it talks about how he’s helped 50 million people around the world. I was like, well that’s cool. Tony helped me.  He helped my wife. He helped our family. If it wasn’t for Tony, my wife and I were at a rough spot before I met Tony, before I went to his event.

It was honestly, it was what healed us. And I’m just so grateful for him and after I went to Tony’s stuff, I went to all of his events in a year period of time, and then right after that my company collapsed. Had I not been equipped by the tools he gave me, I don’t know if I could have handled that. I was just talking about how grateful I am and how excited I was to share him with my world and my people, my funnel hackers. Then we played a video of him and we all went crazy and Tony came up on stage, gave me a hug and took over.

And he was supposed to go for three hours. And again, he was puking five minutes before he got on the stage and I was nervous. And he stood there and he went not for three hours, not for four hours, but for five hours with everybody. It was just cool. Everyone’s jumping and screaming and having fun. It was awesome. It just made the event, it was already amazing, just that much more amazing.

And when it was done, all of the Inner Circle members had a chance to get pictures with Tony, which was cool. Then we went up and ate real quick, and then I had a chance to go up to his hotel room afterwards and interview him for his new book, which hopefully you guys saw him on Facebook live. We showed that. And it was just awesome. That night we passed out, woke up in the morning. We had late checkout, so we hung out for a while and it was just cool to sit there and reflect with my wife. And the coolest thing for me is that this is the first time that Collette has ever been to, I mean she’s come to my events and poked her head in and then had to leave to watch the kids or all these different things, that time the kids didn’t come. So she had a chance to be there and be present and sit in the audience for almost the entire thing. For me, that was special.

It was cool and it was I think the first time she’d ever seen me doing what we do. And you guys have a chance to see it through the podcast and through all the stuff I’m doing, but she’s not connected to that. She’s not connected to the business very much, she’s very much supporting from home, but not part of everything that’s happening. So for her to be able to see that and experience it with people in the audience, it was special for me. So I just loved that. It was awesome.

That was kind of Funnel Hacking Live. And then as we’re, that day we’re leaving, flying home and I look at the Facebook group, and everyday I’m looking, kind of scrolling through, and if any of you guys are in our Facebook group you’re probably bombarded by millions and millions, everyone talking about it. I was like, alright, ready fire aim. Everybody is excited right now. Why don’t we sell tickets for next year’s event right now? So from the airport I did a Facebook Live.

“Okay, we’re selling tickets. There’s a discount and Sunday at midnight we’re pulling the page down. So you gotta buy them now if you want them. Otherwise you gotta wait six months and who knows what the price will be then?” Did a Facebook Live, emailed the list and over the next three days we sold almost a thousand tickets to next year’s event. We almost sold as many tickets as last year, just from that. Hopefully won’t lessen the momentum. If the momentum is there, capitalize on it. Don’t wait six months, “Hey you guys remember the event we talked about six months ago? Who wants to come again?” When people’s energy and emotion and excitement are high, that’s the best time to sell.

So we sold a lot of tickets, which was cool. It’s funny, I had some of the Inner Circle members freaking out, “Do we get discount tickets or not?” I was like, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought through this.” This is the lesson for everyone. I’m a big believer in “Ready Fire Aim” We just fired and I have no idea. We’ll figure it out way later, but we don’t have time right now. We just fired. Sorry, but that’s how it works over here. Everything’s not scripted out and planned second by second. Some things are, but most things aren’t.

Hopefully that’s inspiration for you guys to. To know, “Look, figure things out and just do it.” So that was kind of the event in a nutshell. For those who were there, hopefully that was a good breakdown. I wish I could spend the hour or two hours on each presentation that people did, so you can experience it. But hopefully those that weren’t there, this will give you desire to come next year. I want you guys to be there. Yeah, I will probably sell recordings, and you will probably have some of these videos that are easy to see, but there’s something different about being in the room and being surrounded by 1500 of your peers who are doing the same thing. Seeing 100 of your peers on stage with a big trophy saying I made a million dollars with a funnel this year. There’s something different about that. So I recommend for all of you guys to make that break and come to the event.

One last thing I want to share, because I kind of hinted to this earlier. And I think it’ll be cool for you guys to know. This is actually not a victory, this is a failure. A failure in my eyes. But I want to share with you guys, just so you understand that I mess things up too.

So one of the cool things that I wanted to do is, usually at each Funnel Hacking Live we sell one thing. We did certification at the first event and second event. This year, I didn’t want to sell, I don’t want this to be a selling event, but there’s things we want to offer people. So we had this big trip to Kenya, which was awesome and people jumped on that. We had the Follow-up Funnels which was awesome and people jumped on that. Then I was trying to, we had this new event called the FHAT event that I was excited about and want people to come to that. Then we also had Fill Your Funnel and I think I tried to offer too many things. Not that we, it wasn’t like I was selling each thing, but we had them available.

At the Hack-a-thon, I was like “Hey if you want to come to the FHAT event, here’s one more thing on it.” And I think it almost caused confusion. People didn’t know what to do. I think moving forward next year, we’ll probably just pick one thing and focus on that again, just to not cause confusion. But one of my big things, again I only want one session when we sold, and that was Fill Your Funnel. That one went well, but it was just, the energy wasn’t quite right when I did it. So that was one thing.

But the other cool thing is that the entire Funnel Hacking Live event, if you look at it from the outside, it was a big perfect webinar. Session number one, if you’ve gone through the perfect webinar in detail and as you read the Expert Secrets book, you’ll understand it at a level I’ve never really shared it before. But the first thing we do is talk about the vehicle putting people in. So my first presentation was about creating a mass movement, becoming an expert. So that was the first vehicle. Session number one, would have been secret number one if this was a webinar.

Session number two is about the internal beliefs and that’s how I walked into, I shared the story, showing “Look, you can create a mass movement.” And they’re like, “Well I don’t know if I can.” I’m like, “If you can master stories you can.” Belief number two was all about can they internally do it? So the second presentation for me was all about that. The internal.

Then the third presentation, which was the One Funnel Away, was the external. I believe I can do it, I can tell stories, but I don’t know how to do this whole funnel thing. So I shared at the One Funnel Away presentation to help people understand the external fears. So if you look at, again if you break down the perfect webinar, you’ve got the belief pattern is tied to the vehicle, which is the new opportunity we’re putting people into. That was session number one, number two is their internal beliefs, false beliefs about themselves, and number three is the external false beliefs about themselves.

So that’s how we structure those three presentations, and what we do at the hack-a-thon is offer people to come to the FHAT event, because that was kind of the natural continuation of that. The problem I have is that, if you look at the perfect webinar, what’s the last step? It’s stack and close and we didn’t stack and close anymore. We just basically said, “hey you should come to the FHAT event because it’s awesome.” And we had a lot of people who did, but not what I expected or hoped.

My two big lessons, number one when you’re doing a webinar you can’t forget the stack and the close. It’s important even if you break their beliefs, if you don’t offer them the opportunity to buy and do it in a way that’s going to convince them to buy, a lot of people that you could have served, won’t be served.

I honestly think that everybody should be at the FHAT event. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to serve anybody at a higher level than that. And because I kind of shied away and didn’t sell it and skipped the last step, I’m not able to affect as many people’s lives’ because of that. For me that looks like a failure. IT’s not the money. Money’s a cool way to keep score, but for me, I should have had 100 people from that room coming to Boise so I could help them create the perfect webinar. And I don’t. I have a lot but not that many because I…..I don’t know the exact reason, but I didn’t do it right. It came down to me having fears of trying to make it an official offer to people. It’s funny, even after this long I still make the same fears that other people make as well.  That was one big thing.

And then the other thing, is again, shipping the focus of the event to being focusing on core thing we want people to do. Because I think people were confused, “I’m coming to Kenya, I upgraded and I’m all in, there’s this FHAT event Russell’s talking about and I don’t know what that is because he didn’t tell me about it. Sounds cool, but I have no idea. Then there’s Fill Your Funnel.” So I think that that was my other mistake. There was confusion in where I wanted people to go from here.

So those are the things I learned, and again, that’s something you always learn as you do them. So it’ll be fun, next year my goal is to make the event even better. It’s shifting the focus, well I don’t know what the focus is going to be yet. But it’s making sure that everyone has an amazing experience, both from a marketing standpoint and also a personal development standpoint. I think that’s one neat thing we bring that nobody else does, which is cool.

And then the third thing is really figuring out for people who come through the experience, what’s the next step for them. And focusing everything on that and not having two or three next steps, but one. And saying, “This is what you guys should be doing next. Those who are interested.”

So that’s what I learned at Funnel Hacking Live as well. Anyway, I appreciate everyone who was there, I had a great time. With that said, this is probably the longest marketing in your car of all time, but it’s a recap for those who missed it. And hopefully you guys will come next year, because it’s going to be amazing. Tickets are not for sale right now, but in four or five months we’ll open it and we have probably 1500 more tickets or so I believe. When we do open it up, the price has gone up, I apologize for those that didn’t get my emails and everything else. I tried to warn you. With that said, thank you guys and I’ll talk to you all again soon.

Mar 2, 2017

What happened at this year’s event.

On this special 2 part episode Russell recaps and summarizes what happened at Funnel Hacking Live. He also reflects on how he felt about different aspects and speakers at the event.

Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this 2 part episode:

  • An overview of the schedule during the 3 day event, who spoke, and what they spoke about.
  • How Russell felt about certain speakers and what he thinks went right with his own presentations, and what mistakes he feels he made.
  • What the best part of the event was for Russell (hint – It involves his lovely wife).
  •  And what Russell plans on doing differently at next year’s Funnel Hacking Live.

So listen below for the first half of Russell’s thoughts and feelings about Funnel Hacking Live 2017, and don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for the conclusion.

---Transcript---

Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to Marketing In Your Car. But today’s actually a special episode because first off, I’m not in my car, I’m in the conference room and second off, I got this brand new little microphone that plugs into the bottom of my phone. People have been asking me ever since I started this podcast, “What microphone do you use on your phone?” I always just tell them that Iuse the microphone on my phone, which is true until today. There’s this really cool thing, I don’t know what brand or style, I have no idea but I’m testing it out. So if it seems to be good, I’ll let you guys know.

It’s so cool, it plugs into the bottom of your iPhone and it’s got this big huge thing on it. I’m excited, I’m trying it out. Hopefully this episode goes well enough and I’ll let you guys know more about this thing, because it’s pretty awesome.

So what I wanted to do, I wanted to give a recap of Funnel Hacking Live. I know 1500 of you guys were already there and experienced it and went crazy with us, and for everyone else who wasn’t, I wanted to catch you up on what’s happening and why it was amazing and why you should be at next year’s event. If you missed this one for some insane reason, because there’s no logical reason to have missed it, only insane ones. So if you had an insane reason, I want to give you guys some cool behind the scenes of what was happening.

So this year’s event, this is the third year we’ve done it. The first year was in Vegas, we had about 600 people come. The second year, last year was in San Diego and we had 1300 people come and it’s funny because you have to sign a contract for next year’s event before the event, because you have to, because if you’re going to sell tickets for the event you have to know,  here’s the venue and dates, blah, blah, blah. So last year we’re like, let’s make it a little bit bigger, let’s do 1500 people. And then we ended up selling out three months early.

We probably should have done bigger. So next year’s event we’ve got a little bit bigger place. Hoping that we’re able to fill it. Just so you guys are fully aware, nothing on Earth stresses me out more than events. Filling events is the hardest sell. You’re not just selling, “Hey, you should come to an event.” Because that’s an easy sell. The hard sells are all the other sells someone has to make in their mind. “I gotta ask for work off, I gotta talk to my spouse, I gotta fly, pay for flights, pay for hotels.” All these other things, so it’s not just a simple sell, I want to….usually when you sell something you create desire and people want it and you sell it.

This is harder, even if I create desire for it, you still have to go and close yourself on all the other logistics that are a pain. Event’s are scary. In fact, the last time I did an event before Funnel Hacking Live, which I swore I would never do another event after. I think we sold 3 or 400 tickets, and when we got there only…and it was $100 tickets, so I assumed that $100 commitment was enough to get people to show up. I was wrong. We ended up only having 100 that showed up.

It was so embarrassing for me. I remember having all these empty seats. I was like, “I will never do another event again.” Then fast forward a couple of years, about the time this podcast was starting, I probably talked about it. There was this new company we were working on called Rippln, and they did their initial kickoff and there was 1200 people, and we ended up getting 1.5 million people to sign up over the 60 days or so. And then there was an event on the backside of it.

So I thought there was going to be 30,000 people at this event, I was all excited for it. But at the time, the company hadn’t launched the actual thing that we’d built the hype for. There was a huge loss of momentum, at the event we had 1000 tickets sold. I showed up and we were getting ready to open the doors and went in the hallway and there was only about 200 people out there. We were like, “oh crap.”

The guy, Brian, who ran the company was like, “Oh crap. Let’s pull chairs out.” So we sat there, right before the event and pulled 800 chairs out of the room and then we had this huge empty room and then 200 seats in the front and brought people in and did this event over three days. And it was, for me, I was emotionally scarred. I was like, “I don’t know what’s happening, but this is not a good sign.” And sure enough the company crashed afterwards. A lot of wasted energy, time and money on my side that never materialized, but learned a lot of good lessons.

That’s the point, right? So because of those experiences, I had this fear of events. I never wanted to do one. So when the first Funnel Hacking Live, after we launched Clickfunnels, people were saying, people started doing meet ups. I was like, “We should facilitate this.” So we decided to do the first one. We were going to sell 600 seats, and I was so scared, panicking about what if we only sell 100 and we have this room for 600? S

o finally we did it. We launched it, and we sold out, I think we sold out 2 weeks early, so it wasn’t huge, but we did. We did the event and I remember even the day of the show I had so much fear and anxiety. What if people don’t show up? And I remember even before the event started hiding in the back and peaking through and I was like, “Oh good, the seats are full. Thank heavens.” And then I was able to, we did the event and it turned out amazing.

And then last year, same thing. We had 1300 seats sold and I remember the night before we have pre-registration, we only had 200 people pre-register.  I was like, “Oh my gosh, nobody’s coming. This is it. This is my greatest fear recognized once again.” And I’m freaking out and went out there and the next morning tons of people registered and we ended up having the entire thing filled, all 1300 seats and then we did the event, it was awesome.

So this time, I had the same thing. I wasn’t quite as, I had two successful events now, I wasn’t quite as scared, but I still get nervous. So the event happened and this time we, usually the event’s on a weekend, but to get the hotel space we had to do it on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so we all flew in Sunday night, which was nice. We all flew in there and had time to just relax. Then Monday, my wife and I got up and went shopping to go buy clothes, and my team was doing everything, my team is amazing. They’re stuffing binders and getting things ready and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of nice, they were taking care of that.

I was able to go and spend time with Collette, and just get ready for the event and shop. Just kind of mentally get prepared for this thing. And then that night, we had a big VIP dinner for our Inner Circle Members, as well as our certified partners who have actually finished certification. We had a big dinner with them and it was really, really cool.

Now a couple things, this will be one of my themes of this podcast. It’s interesting, and I’m going to be vulnerable and let you guys know all my fears and my things in hopes, not that you judge me, “Man, Russell’s a wuss.” I want you to be like, “Wow, if Russell can do it, I can do it.” That’s more of the goal with this. I love being on stage. I feel comfortable in front of 1500 people talking, and I feel really good there. I get really, really scared one on one or even in groups.

So even at our Inner Circle dinner, there’s 150 or so people, maybe 200 people, I can’t remember, it was kind of a smaller thing, but tons of anxiety being in that room talking to people. Throughout the event people come talk to you one on one, I really struggle. I feel bad. I had my coaching call with Tara Williams this morning and we were kind of talking about this. I was just like, “Man, it’s funny how comfortable I feel up in front of the stage and how scared and nervous and awkward I feel one on one.” And I feel bad about it.

I think a lot of times, for anyone who did have one on one interactions with me. I apologize if I’m super awkward. I don’t know why, I feel nervous. I get really nervous there and I struggle. Which is why I try to hide as much as I can. I try to be out there to take pictures with everyone as well, but it’s really, I struggle with that part of it.

Anyway, we did the dinner that night, it was really fun. Bart Miller, who is one of our Inner Circle members who’s transitioning into becoming a fashion coordinator, he designed all my clothes for the week. And he did the same for Alex Harmosian and a bunch of the Inner Circle members.  So he was there and had me dressing up all nice. So I was nervous because I wasn’t comfortable in my clothes, completely. And then in this room with these people that I admire. I wanted to make sure they had such a good experience, it gets you nervous. At least for me.

But what’s cool, at the end I had a chance to give a quick speech, it was amazing looking out at that room. And I knew most of the people in that room. All the Inner Circle members I know really intimately. I know their businesses, and often times I know their fears, hopes, desires, dreams, passion, all those things. I’m aware of those things, so it’s kind of cool to look out there and realize and look at those guys like, “Man, the ripple effect” That’s funny, because of Rippln, that was our pitch there, but the ripple effect of these people is amazing.

And I kind of talked about that like, how cool it is for me and for us as a company that we get to be a little piece in that journey. For me, it’s such an honor. I get a lot of credit for those things and it’s like, no it’s not me, it’s you guys. We provided a tool, some training, but it’s you guys taking that leap of faith to go and do it. Because the tools and training is out there for everybody, but most people don’t do it, and the reason why is there’s so much fear and anxiety and things that happen. Just seeing this room of people who are taking those leaps, it was awesome.

That was the first night. We went to bed that night and I could not sleep. I really needed to because I hadn’t slept much earlier, and I ended up being up until 2 or 2:30 before I passed out. The next day started and it was insane. We got there and people were packed. Devon Brown, who is the best MC on earth was MC-ing it, getting people’s energy, he had everyone dancing and it was so exciting. And then we brought the certified partners on stage so everyone could see, “Here are the people who are certified. Here are the people you could hire if you need help with funnels. And if you want to become certified, you want this to be your career, go ask someone from our team because you could be certified. This could be your new career, just like these guys.”

We had most of our Clickfunnels team come on stage, so people could see who was actually behind the event. Then after that, I had a chance to get up and it was cool because these events are always fun for because I get to share what I’m thinking about, I’m geeking out about at the time. And it’s usually stuff I’ve shared in the Inner Circle, I’ve shared some of on the podcast, but it’s never been formally presented. So this is the first time I had a chance to formally present the first section of the new Expert Secrets book, which is creating a mass movement. And it was so much fun to share that and walk through the models and show people that.

And I think a lot of, I don’t know, I felt like it was for a lot of people, just such a new, exciting thing to see and realize that we’re not just selling things. You are creating a movement. What’s interesting, one thing that kind of made me sad about the event, I know it frustrated some people, in the initial sales letter we had a little section saying I was going to talk about supplement funnels, and I didn’t because of just how things shift as you start growing the event and speakers and some things have to get cut and some things don’t. And that was one that got cut.

Someone came up to me afterwards and was like, “I came all the way from Australia because I wanted to learn about supplement funnels.” I was like, “Well I’m not specifically talking about supplement funnels, but this stuff is the same. It doesn’t matter. We are building the supplement line right now and the difference between the first supplement funnel was all a media based thing where we had a really good funnel and drove traffic. But we didn’t build a culture, we didn’t build a following and that’s why it grew and then it went away. It was kind of over.

I was like, “With the new supplement stuff we’re doing, this building a mass movement, is the same. All these principals we’re talking about are the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling supplements.” I was trying to explain to her and I don’t think she believed me and she was frustrated and walked away.

This is the key to all business. This is the key to everything you’re doing. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, this is still the foundation of how you position an offer and how you treat your customers and how you get them to buy over and over and over again. So I was excited to finally share that and it was just so cool.

Then we had a break and after that Todd Brown came up. And Todd is, I always say if you look who are the two guys out there in the market teaching funnels the most it’s me and Todd. Todd’s a lot smarter than me. A lot more analytical I think at stuff and he has a chance to hang out with some amazing marketers. So I love his perspective, he came in and we were talking about the big idea. How do you create the idea behind the marketing campaign’s to get people to buy your thing? And it was fun just to see how he breaks things down and how he looks at things.

He’s definitely different than how I look at things, but I appreciate it so much. The way that he views things, I respect him a lot. And it was awesome having him up there sharing his perspective on that. Because I think a lot of people are getting good at building funnels, but they’re missing my first presentation which is creating a mass movement, and the positioning of things, and that kind of stuff. And then Todd is figuring out the big idea. So that was the next cool thing and people loved that.

From there we broke to lunch, which I feel like eating is such a waste at these event. We’ve got two hours we gotta block out for lunch so people can go and eat. But nobody needs that. We need to be sitting in a room talking. We let people eat, because I think people need that. Humans have to eat every once in a while. But yeah, we went to lunch. For most of these meals, we bought lunches and dinners and stuff like that for most of the stuff. Because I didn’t want people to have to leave, it’s just kind of a nice touch I think, to help provide those for people.

So we fed a lot of people. I can’t remember if we fed people that lunch or not, but whatever. But then after I came back, this is where I had a chance to go into story, which is the next thing. The epiphany bridge, I shared a lot of pieces of that with you. But another cool thing for me, Daegan Smith, who is one of my favorite people in the world, one of my mentors, peers, friends, whatever you want to say. I actually had him come to the event because I wanted him to see a lot of this stuff that I was talking about, a lot of stuff I initially learned from him and then stuff that we talked about what inspired ideas that made me test things and try things.

So I had him there, and it was cool because I had to give this cool presentation on story and I got to give him credit for being there. In fact, the Expert Secrets book, most of it is dedicated to him, because it was the foundation for so much of this cool thing that became. It was fun having him in the room to hear that. I was a little nervous, honestly, I was like, “Daegan, I learned tons of this stuff from you and this is where I’ve kind of taken it.” And it was fun to share that.

So I shared the story and epiphany bridges and how all those things work together. We talked about the hero’s two journeys, all the stuff that’s from the Expert Secrets book, which you guys are going to love. Then I got done and I was able to bring up Brandon and Kaylin Polland, who last year, they were at last year’s Funnel Hacking event and I met them in person there. Then they joined the Inner Circle and I’ve had a chance to be around them and experience them and their business over the last year. And I wanted them to be at the event, so they spoke. They talked about social webinars and telling their story, which is super cool. Their whole thing is #dowhateverrussellsays, and I think their end thing was give Russell all your money and he’ll turn it into more money, or something, which I appreciate.

But it was cool to hear their whole story. What I think what Brandon and Kaylin, outside of they’re crazy talented as a whole anyway, but showing when they got in a year ago or two years ago when they first got started, they didn’t have a ton of money, and they invested in the Funnel Hacks course, a thousand dollar course a lot of you guys already have. They said, “We went through and pushed play and watched thirty seconds and we paused it and implemented that. And pushed play again….and for three weeks we went through the entire course in thirty second chunks.” They heard it, stopped an implemented it.

And what’s funny is he told me afterwards, that a bunch of people came up and were like, “What was the course you went through with Russell. I want to go through the same thing the same way.” And he told them and they were like, “Oh. I’ve owned that for a year and a half.” And he’s like, “Yeah.” The difference is that they implemented. That’s the key, they’re the most amazing implementers in the world. They’re presentation was amazing.

Then we had a break and after that, Jim Edwards came up, my co-host with Funnelfridays.com. And he gave a presentation on Copy Blocks, which was amazing. I think that hopefully for most people it was liberating. Showing wow, this is, I don’t have to be a creative writer. I just have to understand how blocks work and copy and how Funnel Scripts works and all that kind of stuff. And Jim made it really fun. He did a great job. He made the whole session really fun and exciting and people loved it.

Then when Jim got done, then Stu McLarin came up. Stu is one of the greatest human beings, literally, to be birthed on this earth. I don’t know if I can say it strongly enough. Just an amazing human being. He came and talked about membership funnels, which was awesome. And showing the pre-launch process and how he launched his programs, and it was cool seeing his pre-launch stuff. How he launches, 90% is pre-launch stuff that most people, like me, don’t even think about. It was like, “Here’s a video we launched ahead of time on Facebook and Youtube that got viewed. From here we moved to here…” it showed the whole process which was cool. And From here we launched this funnel and it made 3.3 million dollars and it was cool to show that.

Then afterwards I had a chance to come up with Todd and Dylan and we did a special presentation about World Teacher Aide and we talked about coming to Kenya and we showed a video of me in Kenya from last year. And then this time we said, “Look, if you guys want, we’re going, if you guys will pay for a classroom you can actually come to Kenya with us and do a special Mastermind.” We had 11 spots that were open and that night we sold all 11 of those spots and I think we had 7 or 8 people on the waiting list, which is crazy. When all is said and done, by the last day we had raised between the money, it was almost, just shy of a quarter of a million dollars, that we had raised for World Teacher Aide from the event, which was insane.

What a quarter of a million dollars will do in Kenya, is the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars here in America. There’s so many people and kids and communities, lives will be effected because of that. I just, everyone was gracious and giving, which is awesome.

After that, we ran down and did our round tables. Which had a bunch of people at round tables and anyone could come and ask questions and it went really, really well. We had a big buffet down there and everyone was eating and partying, asking questions. It was good. I think next year we’re going to tweak that a little though. There were pros and cons. The pros were everyone who got at a round table it was really, really powerful. Those who didn’t though, they were kind of like, it was hard. And I don’t know if we need to get microphones or something. Have people rotate from table to table. Some people purchase a table and sit there for the entire two or three hours and other people can get it.

We’re going to figure out how to make the round tables a little better. But it was really cool for everyone come out and have a chance to talk directly to the speakers and the Inner Circle members and things like that. It was awesome. That was day number one. I slept really good that night, which was awesome.

Feb 27, 2017

A quick little rant after I woke up this morning.

On today’s episode Russell talks about standing up for Caleb Maddix in a marketing Facebook group after people twice his age begin making fun of him. He also talks about having good character no matter what.

Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:

  • Who Caleb Maddix is, and why he’s so amazing.
  • Why Russell stood up for Caleb when other marketers were making fun of him.
  • And why it’s important to have good character no matter what room you’re in.

So listen below to hear how you can still build the tallest building without having to knock other buildings down.

---Transcript---

Good morning Funnel Hackers. So today we’re home with my little Norah here. She’s holding me. She’s a little sad because she wanted to go and say bye to the kids at the bus stop, but instead we’re hanging out and we’re going to do a podcast because, in fact, I’m going to do a big update on Funnel Hacking Live because I know a lot of you guys want to know what happened behind the scenes, all the cool stuff. Conversions, numbers, metrics, all the nerdy stuff we all care about.

But today, I’ve wanted to do a podcast this morning on something, a little something I like to call character. I’m sitting here because I’m a little upset this morning. Upset as I can be because I’m usually pretty happy, but definitely just kind of annoyed and wanted to share this with you.

Yesterday was Sunday, I was home, I went to church, hung out with the kids, having a good time. Then I jumped on the inter-webs because, honestly because we were selling Funnel Hacking Live tickets for next year, and we were looking at numbers and stats and went to Facebook to see if people were talking about it and what was happening. And then in the middle of my news Facebook feed I see a big old video from my buddy Caleb Maddix, now Caleb, if you don’t know him yet, he’s 14 or 15 now, amazing kid. He spoke at Funnel Hacking Live on stage and crushed it. One of the best presenters we had by far and he’s a 15 year old kid and just one of the most talented, amazing humans, individuals I’ve ever met in my entire life so far on this earth. And Caleb is so cool, him and also Emily Shay, we had both of them speaking at Funnel Hacking Live.

Both of them actually came out here to my home in Boise and helped share with my kids. Right now, my kids are part of the Maddix book club, maddixbookclub.com, where every morning they get a text message from Caleb with the video, he’s got them reading books and all sorts of cool stuff. It’s the coolest thing in the world. He’s inspiring kids, changing the world, he’s able, as a 15 year old kid, he’s able to stand up in front of 1500 people and control the audience like no one I’ve ever seen. Just one of the most amazing humans I’ve....on earth.

Anyway, he’s got so many talents and so much drive and he’s a hard worker and just awesome. And his dad who is an amazing human as well. Just can’t …..there’s no way I could think more of them. They’re just so amazing. Everyday I’ve actually had with Caleb has been super professional, super polite, just love that kid.

So I’m on Facebook, I’m scrolling and I see this big video of Caleb. I’m like, oh it’s Caleb’s video. And above it I see some moron posting something about why…something about this kid and blah blah blah, making fun of him. And it was in a marketing group that I’m part of. And this marketing group……It’s one of those groups that they got in there because they’re all marketers and then they all like to make fun of everybody. They make fun of Gary V. they make fun of, they probably make fun of me. If I wasn’t in that group, I’m pretty sure that I’ll get kicked out eventually and then they can all make fun of me. Whatever.

And I don’t really, whatever. It doesn’t really bother me that much. But I saw Caleb sitting there and they all started making fun of him and they all started going and at first I just read them and I was like, whatever these guys, that’s what they do to whatever. So I just kind of ignored it and then for the next hour it just bugged me. I was so visually bugged. I’m playing with my kids and I just had this annoyed feeling. I was like I gotta go, if I was at an event or sitting somewhere and a bunch of people were saying things like that about someone I love and respect and is a friend, I would stand up and be like, I’m going to go and just…

So I go back to the group, find the post, I just posted some really simple, I don’t remember exactly what it was but it was like, “Hey, Caleb’s awesome. He came out to Boise and trained my kids, he’s got my kids off video games. Right now they’re reading and they’re writing and they’re learning. He’s amazing. It’s interesting to me how many haters….” It drives me nuts because Caleb has tons of, you see his videos, tons of comments from jerks. People who just have to put in their two cents because they feel like they’re tough because they’re behind the computer.

So I said, “Caleb has tons of haters, but it’s typically from people who are double his age and making half as much money as him. There’s two ways to build the biggest building in town. One’s to actually work hard and become better yourself, and the other is trying to knock down the other buildings around you.” I just posted that and left it there.

So they get some people coming in like, “oh yeah, Caleb’s cool.” So at the playground, someone’s getting bullied until one cool kids stands up and says, “Oh yeah, he’s cool.” So all the sudden all the people who were too afraid to say anything come out, “Oh yeah, Caleb’s cool.” That kind of made me happy.

So this morning I woke up, and this one drove me nuts. This morning I woke up, in this thread where they’re all picking on a 15 year old kid, who is a thousand times more talented than any of them, by far. Some guy comments to me and says, “Hey Russell, don’t you think you were kind of harsh on so and so? Especially considering the room that you’re in.” I was like, “Okay. You guys are bullying a kid behind his back in a Facebook group and then one guy comes and sticks up for that person and teases there person who makes the post because he’s half as successful as this 15 year old kid and now you’re mad that I’m bullying that guy that made the initial post?” I was like, “Are you kidding me?”

So I wrote a comment back, I just said, “You know I try to treat all people the same no matter what room I’m in #character” and I left it there. Anyway, that was how my morning started this morning, and I thought it was interesting and funny and I just wanted to leave a message for you guys.

First off, a couple of things. So number one, if someone is a thousand times more successful than you and doing their thing and having fun with it, it doesn’t help you to cut them down. If you’re feeling insecure because they’re doing that. That means it’s a problem about you. And posting trash about it is not going to help you. Looking at that and inspired will. That’s number one.

Number two, I don’t know about you, but what my parents taught me and what I teach my kids and I hope that you will learn as well is that you should treat people the same no matter what room you’re in. That’s ridiculous that, oh we’re in this room so we’re okay picking on a 15 year kid behind his back. No. What kind of character do you have? If you think that’s okay, that is ridiculous. That is insane.

If you’re in a room and everyone is making fun of people behind your back, I don’t care if it’s the internet or offline or whatever, just know when you’re not in that room those same people are making fun of you. That’s called lack of character. If you have character you treat people the same no matter where you are. I don’t care if you’re…….it’s just ridiculous. I feel like I’m working with my 11 year old twins. This is not something that an adult should still be struggling with. If you have any character at all, that’s how you treat people the same. Especially people……just ridiculous. #character, my new slogan for today.

That’s kind of all I wanted to share with you guys. Seriously, what’s that thing they say, if you’re pointing outward at somebody, there’s 4 fingers pointed back at you. That’s the reality you’re in. That’s what you need to feel good about yourself. Then there’s other issues.

Alright, that’s all I got. Me and Norah are going to go eat and later on today I’ll do a podcast recapping the whole event. Let you guys in on the behind the scenes of it all. But I just wanted to drop that really quick because I think it’s important and says a lot about who we are as human beings. I don’t know about you but I’d rather be friends with Caleb Maddix than any of those people talking trash about a kid in a Facebook group. Grow up and have some character. With that said, I appreciate you guys. Thanks for being funnel hackers. Thanks for doing the right thing. Thanks for being people that I would like to hang out with. With that said, I will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Feb 17, 2017

The one little shift that transformed everything.

In today’s episode Russell mentions some of his preparations for Funnel Hacking Live. He also talks about changing the way he sees and talks about Actionetics.

Here are some cool things in this episode:

  • What the difference is between an improvement offer and a new opportunity.
  • Why Russell doesn’t want to call Actionetics a better email auto-responder.
  • And what some of the features are that make Actionetics more than just an auto-responder.

So listen below to get a sneak peak about some of the stuff Russell will be talking about at Funnel Hacking Live.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome back to Marketing In Your…actually it’s Marketing In Your Closet. I would do it in my car but, I tell you what, things are going so crazy right now getting ready for the event. I don’t even…..I’m heading into the office in a little bit here.

But I’m getting dressed in the closet. So you can hear me talk in here, which I hope is okay. I have something cool to share with you. If you’ve been following along for a long time, or most of you guys haven’t read the book yet, because it’s not actually out. Yesterday from the publisher we got back the guts of the book. The finalized design guts. We had to go through it last night. So Dave was up, we were at the office until 3. I can’t remember 3 or 3:30 or something like that. He went through the whole thing, there was like 10 or 11 little edits and I sent it back in, which means now we can get the books printed. Which means we’re going to be able to sell these things on time, which is insane.

So that’s all happening which I am excited about. And in the book I was talking a lot about this earlier while I was writing, in the podcast, for those who are listening along as we go. I talked about the foundation and building a big mass movement, or culture. There’s three things, there’s charismatic leader or attractive character, number one. Number two is a future based cause and then number three is a new opportunity.

We talked about how you can’t create improvement, but if you created something that’s an improvement, teaching people how to become better then you automatically dis-include 98% of the world’s population, which makes it really hard to sell. So if you struggled selling, it may be you’re selling improvement. People don’t want improvement, the masses don’t. They want a new opportunity, so you could always create a new opportunity.

So last night, the presentation I was working on was to show Actionetics, and if I ask 99% of people who have ever heard of Actionetics, what it is they say, “It’s an email auto-responder.” So as I’m working on my presentation yesterday I was like, “If I call this an email auto-responder, what leverage do I have?” The only leverage is to say this is a better E-R, a better auto-responder. By saying better, it is now an improvement offer. Which means 98 % of the world’s population will no longer care about it. Including people in my market. The only people who care are the 2% who are actually looking for improvement.

So if I pitch that way, I’m going against my own rules. So because I try to practice what I preach at all times, in all situations, I spent the last almost two days now trying to figure out how we position this presentation and the tool, Actionetics as a new opportunity? Because it is. We were here forever trying to figure out the title of the presentation and the hook and angle and all sorts of stuff. Anyway, it’s kind of cool. Literally I spent, I think I told you yesterday, 8 hours figuring out the headline and title. Steve Larsen had a burst of inspiration after all of us were sitting there trying to figure it out.

I had email funnel secrets and I had email funnels and I had all these things. He came up with this idea, this name which was follow-up funnels. And I heard the angels in heaven singing. That is it. That’s it. Actionetics is not an email auto-responder. If I was the Actionetics guy, “Hey here’s an email auto-responder.” I would beat him up. No, I’m so much more than that. But that’s how you classified me because you are trying to make it an improvement, you’re better version of an auto-responder, which is true, but it’s different. It’s a new opportunity. It’s a follow-up auto-responder. All sorts of follow-ups.

So after we got the hook we started looking in December and found out, we went through all of our front end funnels, for every one dollar we made in front end funnels, we made $16.73, something like that, in the follow-up funnel, which is insane. $16 to $1 more than that. I thought it was a typo. I thought we did the stats wrong. We did it ten times. We did 16 times more from the follow-up funnels, than we did from any of the front end funnels, which is crazy.

The front end funnels, I think we spent $85,000 in front end funnels. We made $96, we made $11,000. That was it. Anyway, it’s crazy. So I started going over the follow-up funnels when I started doing this presentation and showing how this is not an improvement, this is a new opportunity. How auto-responders, that’s an old, dead idea, concept. It’s from 1998. The future is follow-up funnels and Actionetics is the tool, the only tool that can do that. Because it’s legitimately a new opportunity. It’s a blue ocean, it’s all these things. There’s no other service that can do what Actionetics does.

Some people compare head to head with the email auto-responders. These ones might have more features, from an email auto-responder standpoint they may be a little bit better. Any time I’m talking about E-R, it’s an improvement offer. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a whole new opportunity. Emails or only 1/10th of the equation. It’s actually the rest of the stuff. I’m going to be showing in the presentation everything. When someone comes in how with Actionetics you can do Facebook follow-up auto-responders, changing the pixels, changing the traffic, the images based on where the funnels are hitting.

We’ll show you how you can change the message based on who they are, how the funnel they have changes. How somebody leaves, they can come back because of sticky cookies and buy 6 months, a year, 5 years, or ten years later and not even have to put their credit card in. There’s so many insanely cool things that Actionetics does. Because it’s not an email auto-responder, it is a new opportunity, it is a follow-up funnel. And that’s the magic.

I just wanted to share that with you because it was a big…..when I got that I was going crazy. But you gotta look at everything you’re selling you guys. If you looked at me, if I looked at myself two days ago, I was selling a better email auto-responder. I look at myself today, I’ve created a new opportunity and it is….that’s what Actionetics is.

So those of you guys who are going to be at the Funnel Hacking Live event, Day two, which is what? Wednesday morning, I’ll be giving that presentation. I spent almost 40 hours straight on this stupid thing and it’s still not done. So I’m going in right now to go finish it off. Then I got two more presentations after that, so we’re getting down to the wire, but what’s coming from it is legitimately amazing. I can’t wait to share with you guys.

With that said, I’m done, I’m getting out of the closet. Coming out of the closet. No, not like that. I’m literally walking out of the closet and into the bathroom and I’m going to go get my hair and head out because I got a call with Caleb Maddix and Emily Shai, I always say her name wrong, Emily Shay in 15 minutes. So if you’re watching Facebook Live’s come check it out, we’re doing Facebook Live’s with all the different speakers, telling out stories and it’s been so much fun. I’m having so much fun with this so far. Come hang out with us and I’ll see most of you guys at Funnel Hacking Lives. Thanks everybody and talk to you soon.

Feb 16, 2017

Some behind the scene thoughts, as I’m choreographing Funnel Hacking Live.

On today’s episode Russell talks about some of his preparations for the Funnel Hacking Live event next week. He talks about spending hours on the headline and sub headline for a particular presentation and why it’s important.

Here are some of the enlightening things you will hear in this episode:

  • What presentation was so important that Russell spent several hours over a few days coming up with a headline and sub headline.
  • Why you should be excited for after Funnel Hacking Live when Russell reveals a lot of the choreography that goes into planning an event of this magnitude.
  • And why having everything perfectly choreographed could mean the kind of difference that will effect your wallet.

So listen below to find out why the choreography of a big event is so important.

---Transcript---

What’s up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I hope you guys are doing fantastic, wherever you are listening in. So today a couple of things. First off, we are 5 days away from Funnel Hacking Live and so much crazy, insanely coo, amazing stuff is all happening that I wish I could share all or just a piece of. But I’m on my way to get a haircut and I’ve got 8 minutes so I thought this would be the perfect time to hang out with you guys. And I’m actually in my car, which is strange, seeing how that’s the name of the podcast.

And also, a couple of people told me that two episodes ago where I talked about the sport we call business, talking about the playground with the athletes and the drama and the skaters, all those things. A couple of people said they were kind of offended by that. I didn’t mean it to be offensive, I meant it to be, in fact I said at the beginning there the things I learned from those guys was awesome. The collaboration I….I wouldn’t have collaborated well had I not learned that from those other groups. I’m just saying you have to understand that when you’re in a group with a melting pot of a whole bunch of different personalities that there are people who are like me, who are aggressively competing and just being aware of that, hopefully to bring some competition to you.

So if you were offended that means that it’s time to build some aggression, instead of on me do it on your competitors. Anyway, I’ll leave that there. Let’s see, I just wanted to kind of walk you guys behind the scenes of what’s happening, because it’s insane.

So the event’s happening, which means we are creating order forms to print and signs and bags and backpacks and things and then presentations and speakers slides. It’s just, it’s crazy how many things go into this. Then we had this great idea, thanks to Trey Lewellen to do Facebook Live’s with all the speakers before the event to get excited. So we’ve been doing that twice a day which has been so fun. You’re going to be so excited to come and hang out with everybody, which is cool.

And then a big part of events, I’m going to bring you in on a little secret, don’t tell everybody this. I don’t know if you guys knew this, but we actually make money at the events. So there’s the big secret, it’s out, the pink elephant is out of the room. So now that that’s out there, the event, there’s a couple of focus, one is to get everyone together and build community and culture and myths and stuff like that. That’s one thing, obviously. And another is for us to make money as a company. So that’s one of the benefits, but there’s a fine line between having an event that…..When I first got started the way that events were is you had 15 speakers, every speaker is up for 90 minutes pitching something and that’s how the event was. People didn’t mind for a while. Then they started really minding and people stopped going to events.

I’m like, if I want people to come to my events, it’s not pitch fest where everyone’s selling. But at the same time we need to sell. So how do you do it in a cool way where it’s not distracting but it adds a benefit and those kind of things. You know, a big, big, big piece of this whole pie is choreographing the event. It’d be fun to talk about the event choreography for a long time with you guys because there’s so many cool things. I think after the event, depending on what happens, I’ll share with you guys some of this stuff that’s actually happening. Because there’s the surface level, what everyone will see, but there’s stuff happening at a subconscious level that’s so cool. I wish I could share with you guys right now. But I don’t want to ruin the surprise for those that are going to be there.

But there’s stuff happening that there’s patterns that I’m using in really interesting ways that are very, very thought through. If you guys watch who’s speaking, when. How they’re speaking, what the topics are, the length of time. All those things are choreographed for a purpose. It’s not just to put a speaker in here on this day, kind of stuff. There’s a storyline that we’re telling through the event, which is why I try to make it all so engaging, so people are not sitting in the halls, because if they do they miss the storyline. There’s a very key storyline that’s happening throughout the whole thing.

Even the pace of the speakers and where they’re at has a lot to do with it. The order of my presentations is very specific. There’s hint that I’ll drop right now and share with you guys post event, maybe. Hopefully, we will.

Anyway, it’s so exciting. And it’s really fun. I wish I could explain everything. But I mean everything from how do you build a rapport quickly with the audience? How do you get rapport with the speakers and with the MC ahead of time. That’s what these Facebook Lives, it’s a big part of it because rapport is huge. How do you teach in a way that doesn’t just overwhelm people, but brings epiphany bridges, or breaks belief patterns and helps people to learn and grow and have not just like, “Oh I learned really cool tactics.” But emotional shifts that change things.

Because that’s the experience we’re trying to deliver and there’s so much that goes into that. Again, it’s being impactful and making an amazing networking content, belief transformation event that also setting us up to make money. So it’s kind of cool how things will be weaved in. And we’re making a couple of really special offers at the event that aren’t going to be available to the general public for a long time. But will be available to those who were there. And it’s going to be cool. So I’m excited.

Those who are coming and watching, pay attention. I would say, if you buy stuff from me, buy slowly because everything that we’re doing is thought through. It’s not just, oh let’s blah. It’s all very, very well thought through. But one kind of cool thing, doing a presentation of the morning of day two, which in our past events we always called the Clickfunnels state of the union. We talk about all the new features and stuff like that. It was really good, but also was…the energy on that session always felt wrong. It wasn’t …..I wanted it to be like Steve Jobs thing, where he’s up there and everyone goes crazy. And it’s never quite been that.

So I wanted, how do we choreograph this in the right way? And I’m really proud of what’s happening. I started on this presentation yesterday, about twenty four hours ago. I spent the entire first 24 hours on two things. One is choreographing the presentation, number two is figuring out the title and headline, which is crazy. I’m not going to share with you guys here, because it’s cool but I literally at ten o’clock last night is when everybody else left the office and I was trying to figure out a name for the presentation.

Because I had a name initially and I was just like, it’s good but it’s not great. Most people would have done it, and it would have been fine. If we used it, it would have been fine. But I was like, I need something that has enough emotional impact that it makes you be like, “what? What is that?” So I literally sat there going through books and books and books of swipe files, trying to find a word.

From 10 at night until about 2-2:30 in the morning, so four and a half hours. And I didn’t find it. Then in the morning I woke up and I was stressed out, so I voxed everyone on our marketing group like, “Hey everyone, this is my dilemma. Give me your thoughts.” So everyone was giving their thoughts back. And then I came back and spent another two or three hours and then finally Stephen actually had the epiphany. He was like, “What about this?” I was like AHH! Angels from heaven singing. That is it, that’s the one. Yes. And we were freaking out and we got it.

Then I spent the next 7 hours trying to come up with the sub headline, which is crazy because all my slides have to be done tomorrow if they’re going to be in the booklet. So I’m on this huge time crunch but I still spent 7 hours on the sub headline. And then we got it. And it’s perfect. And it’s, it will cause the emotional response, number one. But it’ll cause the belief pattern to shift in people’s minds.

Because I look at people that are succeeding with funnels and those who aren’t. The difference between two comma members, who are making a million dollars in funnels and those who aren’t. And it’s a belief pattern in one thing, and if I can smash that belief pattern it’ll shift everything for them. That’s the key of this whole thing. I’m so excited to give this presentation now. Except now it’s 5 o’clock and I’m getting my haircut and then I’ve got scouts tonight, so I’m doing scouts.

Then after scouts, I’m coming back in the office after 9. So from 9 until 2 or 3 tonight I’ll be getting slides done because I have to get this presentation done tonight. And there’s a lot that goes into that. Because its, again, it’s us showing all the new features within the context of this presentation and the choreographing of it.

So the things I wanted to share with you guys because I know it’s kind of vague today, but I want you to understand the concept of choreographing things. The perfect webinar is a choreographed presentation that does a very specific thing. Those who were at the FHAT event last week saw it in very intense detail, more than I’ve ever done before. What I’m choreographing, what stories are where and why? What belief patterns are supposed to break at each point? The Expert Secrets book will go deep into that as well, but it’s the choreographing of the sales message.

Same thing is on this event. The choreographing of it, when I give presentations it’s the choreographing of that. How do we, what are the beliefs they may have and what order and how do we structure this stuff to fit within that? So I spend insane amounts of time. I spent probably 12, actual thinking time, probably 6 hours to get the title of the presentation. And then another, what did I say? Another 8 hours or so, 7 hours getting the subtitle. It was just insane. I gotta get 5 hours to get the rest of the slides done. But that’s how much thought goes into it sometimes.

So if you’re working on a presentation or a sales pitch or something, you spend 30 minutes on a headline, and you’re like, “ugh I can’t get it” and you’re frustrated and walk away. Know that it happens to everybody. It happens to the best of us. But the one’s when you get it right, that’s the difference between, again, a 5 or 6 figure campaign and a 7 or 8 figure campaign is getting that right. So don’t be afraid to put the time and energy and effort into that because it’s worth it in the end and hopefully it’ll be worth it for the attendees. You guys will have to let me know afterwards.

Again, I will share with you. After the event is done I will walk you guys through the choreography, the what and why and how it all worked. What worked and what didn’t work. So that’s all I got today. I’m at the haircut place, two minutes late. I’m going to bounce. Thanks you guys for everything. I can’t wait to see you guys at Funnel Hacking Live, those who are going to be there. Those who can’t make it there, please come next year. I don’t put out half a million dollars or more in cash from my pocket just for my health. It’s to serve you guys.

So take advantage of that, it’s worth the $1000 bucks and the couple grand for tickets and hotels. Because I’m spending 50 times that much on investing into you guys. So make sure you invest that back into yourself as well, because we do care and I do know that this stuff works and it can change your life. So if you’re on the fence thinking about next year if you’re going to come or whatever. Just remember you guys, you’re just one funnel away. I cannot wait to help you implement and create that funnel. Alright guys, talk to you soon. Bye everybody.

Feb 14, 2017

This goes against all logic, but it’s the only way to actually do it.

On this episode Russell talks about procrastinating getting presentations for Funnel Hacking Live done and why procrastination works for him. He also talks about why he sells stuff before it’s even been created.

Here are some of the other exciting things in this episode:

  • What Russell’s dream car is and why some might consider it a downgrade.
  • Why getting work done right before it’s hard deadline is beneficial for Russell.
  • And what creative way Dean Graziosi makes bestsellers.

So listen below to find out why procrastination works so well for Russell.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing In Your Car. Guess what? Today, I’m actually in my car, which is kind of awesome because there’s been less of that lately.

I’m backing out right now and I’m driving the Corvette that is the one we showed everyone when we launched the dream car contest. I’m about a week or two away til I get rid of this thing. Getting rid of the Corvette, and my Lexus is now smashed because I backed into it with my other car. Yes, I’m a genius.

I’m going to be finally getting my dream car. It’s funny, I’ve been, my whole life my dream car’s been a Jeep. Ever since I was a little kid I always wanted a Jeep, but for some reason I never had one. I’ve had a Ferrari, I’ve had a Corvette, all those things. But I don’t even like those cars, I’ve always wanted a Jeep. So all the guys at the office are making fun of me, “Dude, you realize Jeeps aren’t that expensive right?” I’m like, “yeah.” They’re like, “Why don’t you get one?” I’m like, “Because I have a Corvette now.” And they’re like, “Well, get rid of it.” I’m like, “I guess I could. Why don’t I just do that?”

So I’m getting a Jeep. I’m down grading in the eyes of some people, but I’m upgrading in my eyes, which is all that really matters when all is said and done. So I’m pretty excited for that.

But I’m heading to the office right now. Yesterday was planning out all the presentations, the offers, getting order forms, process flows, speaker lineup, all that kind of stuff was yesterday. Today is working on presentations. I got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to get all my presentations done. And then after that I’m heading to the event. So it’s like do or die.

But I want to talk about, because I know some people have voiced concern that my presentations aren’t done and the event is happening. So I want to talk to you guys. I did a podcast a year ago called the Fine Art of Procrastination, which is worth listening to. So this probably part two of that. It just kind of a understanding that most people, we spend so much time planning stuff. And there’s some law, I think its, I can’t remember, Fredo’s law, one of those dudes. But there’s a law that basically however much time you have to get something done, you will fill that time completely up. It always happens.

So if I were to start planning these things six months ago and started working on presentations I would still be not getting it done until right now anyway. So in my philosophy, just why not just get them done right now and it’s better? The other thing, I don’t know about you guys when you do presentations, I’ve had presentations, where I’ve created presentations and I’ve done the presentations a bunch of times and it worked, and then I don’t do it for six months and I come back and do it and even though I’ve done the presentation and I know it, for some reason my mind can’t remember the process and some of the stories, all that kind of stuff gets messed up.

Where if I’m doing the presentations right before it actually happens, then I have better recall and clarity of what I was I doing and why I was doing it and how all the pieces fit together and all that kind of fun stuff. In fact, the FHAT event we did last week, I was up until 1:00 the night before doing my presentations. I was all nervous and all those things, but what’s nice, I’d gone through it so many times, I knew the process and what I was trying to cover, when and why and how they all fit together. So when I gave it, it was all top of mind. If I was to give the FHAT event today, I would struggle because it’s been a week since I did it. I would be like, “Oh wait, why did I do that in that order?” It would probably be hard.

So that’s another reason why I like to wait til the end. Because it gives me the ability to have it top of my mind. What I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and the order and structure and all those things. Anyway, that’s kind of what’s happening today.

So I’m giving you guys all permission, those of you guys who procrastinate. But it comes back to is having a firm, hard deadline. I don’t know about you guys, but if I don’t have the deadline of this is when this has to happen or else it’s never going to happen. If I don’t have those deadlines then nothing ever happens. So that’s why I always schedule things like, “Okay FHAT event happens this day, Funnel Hacking Live starts this day. Product launch is this day. Roll out of MP3 players is this day.” So I set these hard deadlines and that way my, I don’t know, my mind does not have the ability to keep pushing deadline further and further away.

Because it’s like, if we don’t make this one then we miss the next one and the next one. In fact, in our office I went and bought this huge calendar. It takes up an entire wall for the whole year. And what we’d be doing is basically blocking out almost every single week and in most cases every day of every single week for the next twelve months. Everything is so tightly fitted in there it’s like, okay here’s all the stuff that’s happening and there’s no room for deviation.

It’s like, okay this is when things are happening and if I miss something then it throws the rest of the year off. So we have to get things done. That’s kind of how I function. Is setting hard deadlines that are immovable and then reverse engineering to get that done. Like, when do I need to start the core tasks, and then starting those just in time.

I remember I took a class in college, it was a project management class. But I did really bad on it, but the teacher was awesome. I remember it was my senior year, last semester. I was either failing or I was close to failing, but probably closer on the failing side, and I was not going to graduate if I didn’t pass this annoying class. My teacher was super cool, he came up to me after class. He’s like, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “So what are you doing? What’s your…what are your plans after you graduate?” I was like, “Oh well, I already launched this business, selling stuff online. I already have two employees, just going to keep growing that.” And he’s like, “So you don’t really need this engineering stuff right?” I’m like, “Not even a little bit.” He’s like, “Cool, how about this? I’ll give you a C.” I’m like, “Are you serious?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Dude, I love you. Thank you.”

And so he gave me a C, and it was the greatest gift that someone could have ever given me. I don’t remember the teacher’s name or anything, but if I ever see him again I’ll be like, “Dude, thank you for that C.” Anyway, I did learn something from that class, which is why I deserve that C, because I have retention to this day.

In that class he talked about, probably a lot of stuff, the only thing I remember was the concept of just in time production. Where people get things done just in time. I guess that doesn’t really warrant me getting a C, I don’t really know what that means other than in my mind it means I’m going to get things done just in time. I’m not going to try to have things done a month or a week or six months early, because if I do I’m going to stress about it, it’s not going to be right, I’m going to keep pushing it, and I’ll waste so much time.

For me if I can press those timelines I get ten times as much stuff done and sometimes things aren’t perfect when I roll them out, but that’s okay because I have time to perfect them over time. But I do not have time to over time to launch it, get it out the door. Because then it’ll just never actually get done.

For those of you guys who get stuck in that, what do they call it, analysis paralysis, in that mode of trying to make things perfect before you roll it out. What I highly recommend doing for you is finding a business partner who just likes to sell stuff. There’s something magic about sales people.

Like me, for example, not that I’m that cool but I love to sell stuff. And I want to sell stuff fast, before it’s even ready. In fact, Steven Larsen yesterday was like, “Dude, you sell all this stuff before you ever create it.” I was like, “Yes.” And he’s like, “How do you…why do you do that?” I was like, “well, first off, if I sell it and nobody buys it, I don’t want to create it. And second off, by me selling it, I say things about what it’s going to be and I then hold myself accountable to that when I create the products I have to fulfill on these different promises.”

A lot of people create the product first. I remember when I first learned copywriting, they told me that before I create the product, write the sales letter. Otherwise, you’re going to be like, “Oh my product doesn’t do that or that.” And your sales letter gets worse and worse. Instead write the sales letter first and write all the promises you want and say how do I make my product fulfill these promises.

And that’s a better way to sell. The other way around is backwards and doesn’t really work. The key is going up there and selling. So find a good sales person and go and take it. I’ve got, by far, the most amazing partners on planet earth with Clickfunnels. And we’ve joked about this before. If it wasn’t for me, I want to sell this, they would probably still be programming it because there’s so much they want to do. But I’m like, no we gotta sell it.

So I’m selling and they’re developing. So we sold it and the first version of Clickfunnels, guess what? It wasn’t that good. But it got better. The next version wasn’t quite as good, but it got better and better. IT’s continual progression, but the progression is much easier to do when you got cash in the bank from you selling the thing. So that’s kind of the moral of today’s story I think.

In this situation, if you’re that person, find somebody who can just go and sell for you. I was talking to Dean Graziosi yesterday and he was doing an infomercial, so he filmed the infomercial, got a book that had the cover on it, with blank pages inside. Did the whole infomercial, showing the book. And he launched the infomercial and saw what the numbers were. The numbers came back really good, and he said, cool the numbers are good. Now I’m going to go back and actually write the book. So he sent the next six months writing the book.

And then the infomercial knew worked, so he went and tweaked it. This time he brought Larry King on the infomercial, launched it there, it did good but the book still wasn’t finished. He tested it, refunded everyone who bought. He just wanted to see the numbers and now he’s getting ready to finalize it. And what’s cool, this is cool and a huge honor for me. He did the first version with Larry King, test it, worked good. Then a month or two months later I was out at the 100k meeting, and if you guys listen to episodes 300-302 I shared my presentation from the 100k meeting. We talked about epiphany bridges, belief and story and all that really cool stuff.

And Dean, it’s his event so he was there. He was like, this is awesome. So he messaged me yesterday, “Hey just so you know, after your thing I had some big aha’s that I forgot about. Things I used to do in my old shows that I didn’t do. I actually hired Larry King, flew him back out here and we re-filmed the intro.” I’m like, ‘’Really, can I see it?”

So he sent me the link yesterday to the infomercial. So I was watching it and at minute 2:20 he actually said the word, epiphany. And I stood up, clapped my hands. Not only is he using epiphany bridge, he actually used the word epiphany. I was freaking out and so excited, it was insane.

And then I asked him, “Hey man, when in your schedule can we block out to do my infomercial for my book?” and he was like, “Hey, we could do it blah.” And gave me a date, which is insane and way sooner than I thought.

So I may have an Expert Secrets infomercial in my near future. I’m so excited. So we’ll see. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as that goes forward. But how cool would that be. With that said, I’m going to go inside and get some power point presentations done. Appreciate you all; see most of you all at Funnel Hacking Live. And remember you guys, you’re just one funnel away. Thanks everybody.

Feb 13, 2017

Understand who you’re competing against in this game, or else you’re going to lose.

On today’s episode Russell talks about looking at competing in business the same way he would compete during his wrestling days. He views business as a sport and he has figured out how he’s going to beat the competition.

Here are some of the fun things in this episode:

  • How being an athlete on the playground has prepared Russell to go against his competition in business.
  • How an underdog can still beat the company on steroids (venture capitalists).
  • And why you need to start looking at business like a sport if you’re ever going to be able to beat the other guys.

So listen below to find out why Russell is in it to win it when it comes to business.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson, I hope you guys are doing good. I’m actually taking the trash out right now. That’s what that wheeling sound, that’s the trashcan being wheeled. But this is going to be a crazy week. I thought I’d hang out with you guys before I get started on it.

Tomorrow is Monday morning, and Monday is basically the week before Funnel Hacking Live starts. Technically it starts on Tuesday, but Pre-registration starts a week from tomorrow. So Tomorrow is when I get to start doing all my presentations. Yes, I wait til the last week to do my presentations. You want to know why? Because the stuff we were doing six months ago, even a month ago has changed. So I want to make sure I have the most up to date content of all time at any given moment. That’s the reason why. That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is I just haven’t had time.

But that’s plenty of time to get everything done and make it amazing. I know what I’m going to talk about, I just gotta get all the slides and examples and case studies and all that kind of stuff and put it together in a really cool way. Hopefully you guys can hear me. It’s kind of loud, the trashcan. But I am….hold on a second I’m going to…

Alright, this might be the only episode of Marketing while you’re taking the trashcan out. I’m out here and it’s cool, it’s super dark, we just got new neighbors that built a house across the street. We’re on a really dark street where there’s not lights at all. Their house is lit up really cool and the moon is….I wish you could see it. It’s pitch black, it’s way off in the distance, right above the mountains there’s this glowing thing that looks misty and foggy over it. It’s pretty amazing.

Anyway, I’m excited because all the snow has been melting that we’ve had. We’ve had so much snow this winter. Then it rained three days last week and it all melted. And we’re back to where I can see the grass everywhere and it’s so exciting.

Anyway, tonight was really fun, we went to church and then had meetings after church and then went out with the kids, went and played in the wrestling room, jumped on the tramp which is freezing cold, then jumped in the hot tub which is super warm and now we put them to bed. My wife’s actually in there putting them to bed. I snuck out to put out the trash because they wear me out those little buggars. I love them, but they wear me out.

Anyway, Funnel Hacking Live is a week away, which is crazy. It’s interesting, last week we had our FHAT event, here in Boise in our new office, which is super fun and I just have this bad habit of booking way too many things all at the same time. But it’s been fun. There’s something with finishing the book and creating everything for the FHAT event, and everything for the Funnel Hacking Live event, where all these concepts and things we’re talking about right now are becoming so clear.

I don’t know if you guys have done that where you’ve had the chance to go through a really deep immersion. It’s weird all these connections get made that don’t when you’re dabbling and goofing around. That’s why I think people should go really deep when they’re becoming a master at what they’re trying to do. You know, become unbalanced for a while, spending insane amounts of time.

But it’s been interesting, one of the fun things I’ve been thinking about. My dad came to town last weekend as well, which is awesome. I was thinking about business as a whole, it’s such a weird I don’t know, playground is the word that pops in my head, I don’t know if that’s the right word. It’s this weird playground where you go to school, and there’s all these different types of kids. There’s the athletes over here, then there’s the people that are in band, and then there’s the drama kids, and then there’s the skaters, and then there’s…..there’s all these different groups at the playground.

When you typically go out there, you go and play with the people that fit in your mold. So I go play with the athletes. We play basketball, football. Competing against each other, trying to win. That’s what drove us at recess, but I’m guessing the other groups probably didn’t do that. They were, I don’t know what the other groups were doing. But I’m assuming, because we would play games with all the kids, but as I got older, I focused on wrestling and that became my thing and it was a deep passion of how do I become the best.

At first I wanted to be the best in the state. After I was State Champ I was like, I want to be best in the country. And my senior year of high school I took second place in the country. Then I was like, I want to be the best in college, in the country. And I never hit that goal. I guess technically I didn’t hit the best in the country in high school either, I almost, I was two points away from that. College I was like, I want to be an all American, I want to be a national champ, and I didn’t get those goals, but I always knew that’s the person I have to beat. I was aware of them, I looked at them and I watched their matches and I studied them and looked what they were doing and I understood them. I understood their moves and what drove them so that I could beat them.

And I was always aware of the people I had to beat. And that was just like, as an athlete, how I viewed the world and business, not business but things. I mean, for almost two decades of my life, that’s what it was. Here’s where I’m at, who’s above me, I gotta find those people, figure them out, and beat them. And that’s what I understood. And I always assume that that’s how everybody thought. But I guess, back at the playground, I’m guessing the band kids didn’t do that. They hung out and played music together, they had a good time.

The drama kids, they made plays together and had a good time. And then the skaters, they skated. You know, I don’t know all the different cliques and stuff, but everybody did their thing. I always assumed that everyone thought the way that I did. Because that was the only world I knew. And it’s been interesting as I’ve come into business, because for me business was the next sport. I got into business, I mean I was learning about it in college when I was wrestling. My senior year, I didn’t hit my goals. I fell short, and in fact I didn’t even qualify for the national tournament, which destroyed me. And it would have destroyed me if I didn’t have the next thing. For me, business I was dabbling in and that became my next sport.

It was like, here’s the sport, I got to figure out. And it’s interesting, the concepts of funnel hacking and the stuff that I share with people, you know how I always talk about I look at people successful and I model them, and I did, but it was different from that. For me it was a sport, I came in and this is the….I’m on a new playground looking around. Who are the kids that are winning? And the people I saw at the time were Armand Morin, Alex Mandossian, Mark Joyner, David Frey, these are all the guys I saw who were successful. So for me it was like, okay what are those guys doing? It was just like wrestling. I would look at them, scout them, watch them, study and learn and figure out what makes them tick. And then when I understand that, then I go and compete against them.

In wrestling I have a match, and someday I’m going to come face to face, we’re going to walk out on the mat under the lights. I’m going to put my shoes on and it’s going to be me and them and that’s it. And if I haven’t done my homework, I’m going to look like an idiot. But in business it was weird because I would study these guys and try to figure out how to compete with them and be successful like they were and that was my whole thing, and I was racing towards that. But what’s weird in business, we never got that moment where we step on the mat and shake hands and go and find out who prepared more.

It was weird, I became friends with people and our businesses were together and I learned this cooperation stuff that I’m guessing they probably taught at the playground with the kids in the band, and the kids, the other groups that all played together. For business it was fun because I collaborated and I had that, but in my mind, I don’t know about you, but I always had from day one….I remember actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever publicly said this out loud, but for me, I’ve always been very aware of where I visualize myself in the totem pole in my market, where are people at? Where up and down, that’s just how my brain works.

And when I pass somebody, I’m aware of that. And when I know who’s ahead of me, I’m aware of that. When I know that, I study those people, I figure them out and I try to beat them. That’s just how I’m wired. It’s been interesting, as I’ve gotten into, as our business has been growing, I would say in our market, I don’t think there’s any businesses that are really bigger than us right now. Outside of a couple of companies that have taken on venture capitalists. They’ve got millions of dollars dumped into them, which is the equivalent of steroids. Honestly, in sports that cheating, but business it’s like, “Aww yes, someone gave us 14 million dollars, now we can cheat.” It’s just ridiculous.

For me, I’m looking out and we’ve got these dudes that got steroids, they’re cheating, but I got to compete against the, but I’m very aware. In my mind it’s very clear, the companies I’m going after. And it shouldn’t be too hard for you guys that follow me to know, because we make fun of them a lot. But I’m aware of it, I study and figure out what they’re doing right and wrong, what the weaknesses are and then we’re attacking them.

It’s been interesting because as I’ve been doing that, the kids at the playground who grew up in band class, and that grew up in drama and as skaters and all these other things, they’re not used to it. And those are the guys I’m competing against. And it’s interesting because they don’t handle the heat well. We got in a……

For me this is a sport. Business is nothing but a sport for me. It’s like, who do I need to beat? We’re going and attacking and we’re going to beat them. Otherwise, what’s the point of this whole thing? Yes, we’re helping people and that part is amazing on this journey. But there’s not, that’s who I need to beat, what’s the point of it? It’s hard for me otherwise.

Anyway, someone that I kind of ruffled their feathers, I actually thought through this podcast, interestingly enough. But they messaged me and kind of told me off, because they didn’t like what I’m doing. Because I’m aggressive and I’m not playing like they’re used to playing. What they told me, they said my dad taught me never to burn bridges. And I didn’t send this back, but I wanted to. I thought, that’s interesting because my dad taught me how to win and that’s all that matters to me, is winning.

Anyway, I told that story at the FHAT event, and people thought I was pretty, everyone was laughing. But that’s how I feel. I’m very aware of who I am going after. And I don’t publicly. In fact, Dan Usher is here making some videos for us and I was showing the offer we’re creating, there’s one other person who’s had more success in this, I’m not going to say their name. But there’s one person who’s had more success than me in this field where this book is. And I was showing Dan those videos and I was like, “That’s who I’m going against. That’s who I’m competing against. That’s who we have to beat.” He’s like, “I thought you guys were friends.” And I’m like, “We are friends, but it doesn’t matter.” I was friends with people on the wrestling mat, but when it comes to sports I have to win. I’m going after them. I’m not sitting around and trying to be nice. My goal is to win. Flat out. And I want to make sure that everybody understands that.

What’s cool, is during this process I’m making friends and all these kinds of things, but it’s a sport for me. Very clear cut. This is a sport. And I have people I’m competing against and I’m going to win. And it’s interesting, because these other people aren’t used to that, and they are used to that, they’ve never been under the lights, with your shoes tied up and it’s you and them and no one else going head to head. And I am, I’m used to it. I love it, I thrive off it. I need it, I desire it. I crave for that.

So it makes this game interesting because the way that people are beating us right now is through the most part, venture capitalists, steroids. So it just drives me more. Yes, okay. You’re going to cheat with steroids, that’s fine. I’m still going to win, I’m going to take you down and we’re going to choke you out and we’re going to turn you to your back and you’re going to get pinned. And that’s how I view business.

I just want, I don’t know, I want to instill that into you guys. A lot of you guys out there were athletes, you were the kids on the playground who went through that and experienced it, and that’s your drive. For some of you guys it’s not. You have to understand when you step in the business world, that’s who you’re playing against. You’re playing against athletes. People who that’s their goal.

So when I come, when you come into your business and look at your market, you need to be fully aware. Where do you sit on the totem pole? Are you JV or Varsity? First team or second team? Where in the state or country? Because if you’re not aware of that, how do you win if you don’t know who you’re playing against? Somebody told me the other day, after the FHAT event, “One thing I discovered after being around you for the last three days is how aware you are of all the competitors in your market.” And I thought it was interesting, because I am very, very aware. I know what they’re all doing. I’m watching them.

And the things that I like, we use. And the things we don’t, we counter attack against them. You’ll see more and more of that throughout this year as we are aggressively going after our competitors and we’re going to surpass them through raw talent and skill instead of venture capitalists cash, which is amazing.

You know, I wrestled kids that were on steroids before and it’s interesting, they come out and have big muscles. They huff and puff and usually the first 30 seconds to a minute they are really strong, but what I’ve found with the big dudes on steroids, when you choke them, you snap their head down and block the blood, there’s a carotid artery in their neck, if you squeeze that and block the blood to their carotid artery, instantly in the second they go down. Their muscles become weak and they become soft like jelly. And the stronger they were, the weaker they become. That’s what I’ve found.

Not that you guys care, but when I wrestled big people. I count out muscles first, and if I can’t take them down, I have to get their head below me and do a front headlock; we’re going for a choke, cut the blood off from the brain, not long term but just for a second or two. But as soon as you do that, all your muscles lose energy, they stop, you fall and then we attack and we win. It’s similar.

Anyway, that’s just….there’s some…what’s the book, The Art of War? This is the Art of War by Russell Brunson. That’s the strategy, how it works. We’ve talked before in a podcast, how you know when your opponents break. When you’re out there wrestling someone, you push them and you feel, physically feel them break. Their energy stops, their posture, their whole body stops. That’s when you attack harder and faster and bigger, that’s how you beat people that are bigger and stronger than you.

That’s what happening and I hope you guys are enjoying watching it. I’m having so much fun competing. I don’t know about you but I love seeing the underdogs win. I love seeing the dude who’s got better technique beat out the guy on steroids, every single time. I’m calling my shot, that’s the plan, that’s what’s happening. I hope you guys do the same thing. Become aware of who your competitors are. You don’t have to be jerks about it, I’m probably too jerky sometimes, I apologize for that in advance. But be aware of it and understand that, and run this like a sport. If you do that, that’s how you’re going to win.

Because this playground, nobody cares. Nobody cares, I grew up in band, I grew up in drama, I grew up in whatever. Okay, well you’re still competing against the athletes. And if the athletes want to win, they’re going to win. So be very aware of that, going into it. When you’re inside of it, start shifting your mindset to understand that and it’ll become fun. It becomes a game, becomes a sport.

I always tell people, this is one of the greatest sports ever. It’s exciting. That’s all I got for tonight. With that said, I’m done. It’s freezing cold out here, I’m going to go inside and get warm. And for those of you guys going to Funnel Hacking Live in a week, I will see you soon. I cannot wait. Appreciate you all, and I will talk to you soon.

Feb 10, 2017

A glimpse behind the scenes at what happened at this week’s FHAT event.

On this episode Russell tells his epiphany bridge story during a Facebook Live video at the FHAT (Funnel Hack-A-Thon) event.

During his epiphany bridge story you will hear:

  • What inspired Russell to try to make money online in the first place.
  • How Russell and his partners first came up with an idea for Clickfunnels and it was really a way to get Russell to be able to design his own sites.
  • And how Clickfunnels had made it possible for Russell to support his family, while also being able to spend more time with them.

So listen below to hear Russell’s epiphany bridge story and let it inspire you.

---Transcript---

Hey Everyone, this is Russell Brunson, welcome to Marketing In Your Car. I’m at the office right now and it’s been a crazy week. We had our first ever FHAT event here in our office the last 3 days. We were here all night every night and it was amazing. But I also haven’t talked to you guys in a while, and I want to do something really quick because one of the big things we talked about at the FHAT event, well it was kind of 3 things.

Day number one was cult building, I mean culture building. Day number two was story. And then Day three was webinars and webinar hacks and product launch sequences and Actionetics sequences and a whole bunch of other ninja, amazing stuff.

But day two was story day, so we did this cool thing where we talked about the hero’s two journeys and a bunch of other things. And I can’t give you everything right now, but I want to give you one cool. So it’s in the book that’s coming out soon, to a funnel near you. After I talked about the Hero’s two journeys, I showed them how we transition that script into the epiphany bridge script, and if you look at it, I wish I could show you, I wish the podcast could show pictures. Looking at it right now, the way this script works is basically, there’s 8 sections.

There’s the back story, your desires, the wall, the epiphany, the plan, the conflict, achievement and transformation. So the back story, what is your back story that give us a vested interest in your journey? Number two is your desires, what is it that you want to accomplish? And inside of that, what are the external struggles you are dealing with and what are the internal struggles you are dealing with.

From there you hit a wall. The wall is the problem or the…what is the wall or problem that you hit within your current opportunity that started you on this new journey. Then you have the epiphany. So what was the epiphany experience and the new opportunity you discovered. Then the plan, what was the plan you created to achieve your desire? Then there’s conflict. What was the conflict you experienced along the way? Then there’s achievement, what was the end result you achieved. Then there’s transformation. What was the transformation you experienced?

So those are the process of telling a good epiphany bridge story. So anyway, I know it’s hard to visualize that, but when you get the Expert Secrets book you’ll see the graphs and images and it’ll be all explained and you’ll love it, I promise.

But when we were here yesterday, or two days ago, whenever it was, the event. I did an epiphany bridge story on Facebook Live, telling my Clickfunnels story. So I wanted you guys to hear that story because it’ll…..going through all these aspects, you’ll see them all weaved in. Everything from the back story, the desire, the wall, the epiphany, the plan, the conflict, the achievement and the transformation.

So I’m going to get the audio and I’ll plug it in here so you can listen to the audio of my epiphany bridge story, which is my Clickfunnels story, the origin story. The origin story of how I got excited about funnels and how Clickfunnels came to be. So I’m going to play that audio for you right now, and you guys will hear my epiphany bridge story. So let me connect to that right now.

Hey everyone, this is Russell, I hope you guys are all doing awesome. So I’m here right now in the room of 48 or 49 amazing entrepreneurs, and we’ve been talking about storytelling and how to tell your story, the origin story of wehre you got started and what got you into what you’re doing. So I’ve been challenging all of them to go and do that, and I thought it would be kind of cool if I just told you guys my story. Some of you guys have heard pieces or parts of this, but probably not the whole thing.

So what I wanted to do is share with you guys the story about Clickfunnels and why this, for me, became my new opportunity, the thing that I’m so excited about and why I have so much passion. Some of you will say, “Russell you’ve been talking about Clickfunnels everyday for the last two years.” And I’m like, “I know, because I’m so excited every day.”

So some of the back story, if you don’t know, I got started in this business, I guess it’s almost 13 or 14 years ago now, and when I did, I was a college kid, I was going to Boise State University, which is just down the road from where I’m at right now. I was a wrestler which means I wrestled and I had to go to school. So I barely graduated. It was barely. I think my accumulative was a 2.1, which means I got a whole bunch of C’s and one B over 5 years, so it’s kind of painful. But I graduated which made my mom happy, which is pretty cool.

But during school, while I was wrestling I started learning about that internet marketing stuff. And you guys remember this is 12 years ago, before Facebook, before Instagram and all these kind of things. We had Google, kind of. In fact, I don’t even remember how we were driving traffic. We didn’t have a website, or anything. I was using Front Page, some of the old timers remember Front Page. I would create these things in Front Page and it was pretty bad. So I was doing that, but I believed that it was possible. I saw people, some of my mentors, like Arman Morin, Alex Mandossian and some of these guys who were making money online.

I was like, if these guys can do it, I’m pretty sure I could do it. So that was my goal that I wanted to accomplish. The other side of that that I don’t share a lot of times, it wasn’t just that I wanted to make money, that was just a desire I had. The bigger desire, I had just gotten married to my beautiful wife, we’re still married today. It’s been almost 15 years this year, which is amazing. I married here, she was working full time to support me, her jobless wrestling husband and I don’t know about you, but I always envisioned that when I got married, I would be the man, the supporter, but it was honestly pretty tough for me. That she was supporting me and I didn’t have anything to contribute other than going to school and wrestling, and it was hard for me.

I remember I was like I got to figure out a way to contribute. I don’t want her doing everything. So that was the real driving factor. In fact, my goal was, if I can make $1000 a month, that would match what she was making, we weren’t making very much money at the time. Then I’ll feel like I’m contributing as well. So that was my goal, to figure out a way to do this. I tried all sorts of stuff.

I was trying Ebay, I was trying Craigslist, I was doing this stuff. I had a $20 a month, which was a big deal for me, I was excited, but none of the things really hit big. About that time I started learning about information marketing. In fact, I was at a post office mailing something I had bought from Ebay in this huge awkward box, I thought it was going to sell huge, and it ended up selling for $1.50 and I lost a ton of money. Then postage, it was a nightmare. I’m sitting in the line at the post office next to this dude, who had a big box full of CD’s, thousands of them. I was like, “Dude, what are you selling?” and he was like, “I have one CD that I sell and I burn it.” And I’m like, “These are your orders for the month.” And he’s like, “These are my orders for this week.” I was doing the math, “how much do you sell them for?” He’s like, “$67” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” And I had this…..I need to sell information, that is the future.

So I started to try to figure out information. I started doing stuff and my very first product I ever created was a DVD on how to create potato guns, I’m sure some of you guys have heard this story before. So I started making potato guns and it was working really good, but then what I was doing was going to Google and buying ads on Google and making some money back and forth, but eventually I probably had 4 or 5 months of success and then Google changed their algorithm and it got really hard.

And the hardest thing for me during this time, it was me building things in Front Page, and I had to figure out how to FTP pages and images and how to go to Paypal to get the order, it was super techy and I’m not a techy person at all. But after Google changed their algorithm we tried some stuff. I remember one of my friends called me, it was Mike Filsaime, some of you may know Mike, he said, “Russell, I figured out how to make this whole internet marketing game work again.” I’m like “What do you mean?” he’s like, “Is your potato gun thing still making money?” I’m like, “No, I can’t break even, I can’t make a profit.”

And he’s like, “well I went back to all my sites and added these things.” He called them OTO’s and I’m like, “What’s an OTO” and he’s like, “It’s an upsell, a onetime offer.” I’m like, “Oh.” And he’s like, “I added these upsells and people started buying the upsells and suddenly I’m making two or three times as much money from everything I sold. And I was like, “I could actually do that.”

So I remember jumping online I was Googling potato guns, trying to figure out what my upsell would be, I don’t know. All I had was a potato gun DVD, and I met this dude up in northern Idaho who actually made potato guns and drop shipped them. I was like, “Dude, if I sell those, would you drop ship them for me?” and he was like, “Yeah, I’d love to not have to sell these things.” So I partnered with him and I started selling the DVD’s and people started buying this upsell. And it was the first thing I’d made a funnel. I was like, this is a funnel.

And that was this new thing and I was so excited. So I had this epiphany, this is the future. If I can make more funnels, this funnels been making me 20-30 bucks a day, but what if I had 2 funnels, or 3 or 5 or 10? So I started going a little bit crazy and I created funnels in the couponing market, which by the way, is a horrible market. People in that market do not like to spend money. Don’t do that. We did couponing, we did dating, we did weight loss, we did network marketing, I’ve done diabetic supplements. That’s the ones on the top of my head, there’s…..I could show you guys, there’s a trail of thousands of offers, some that worked, a lot more that didn’t work.

But we were doing these things over and over and my plan was if I had ten of them that are each making a hundred bucks a day, or 20 or 30. So I was doing this, and at first it was working but the problem I kept running into was, Front page isn’t…. for people like me it was hard. I would do these pages and mine looked ugly and other people’s looked awesome. So then I had a designer and he would design these things. I would make a front page ugly, send it to him and he would design it and make it look cool. I’m like, put it up.

But then it was up and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t touch it again. I had one shot. Then I had to bug him. Then I hired a web guy to do edits for me. Then I was using Paypal and I couldn’t do anything else. So then someone invented a one click upsell. I was like, “Dude, I need that.” So I hired a programmer to connect that into the next….it kept getting more and more complicated to the point where soon I wasn’t able to do anything.

I would look at it and be like, “Change that.” And they’d try to change it, but they didn’t. I’d be like, “Move it over here.” And they’d put it in the wrong spot. It would take days, sometimes weeks of going back and forth with the guys in Romania and India and everywhere to try to get them to move an image or make it a little bit bigger. Things that were so common sense and I couldn’t actually do it, and it drove me nuts.

About that time, one of my friends and partners, in fact, he might be in the room right now. Is Todd in here still? He’s already eating lunch, he’s already gone. Todd was one of my partners doing these things with me. He saw my frustration and he’s like, “What if we build something that…” and the joke was, “Russell could edit the website and actually move things and quit bugging us all the time.” I was like, “That would be awesome.” And he’s like, “That’s what we’re going to create.”

And that day we sat in front of a whiteboard and started mapping out what it would look like and how it would work. So we mapped out this vision of what became Clickfunnels, and he went home and actually built it. It was funny, him and another partner we brought in, Dylan Jones were working, he did the editor. They would build part of it and be like, “We need to make this so simple that Russell could do it.” So they’d do it and be like, “Russell, test this.” And I‘d login and be like, “How do I do it?” And they’d be like, “We’re not going to tell you. You gotta figure it out on your own.” I’m like, “Okay.”

So I’d do some stuff, and if I could figure it out, then good. We got it. If I got stuck, I’m like, I don’t know what to do. So they’re like, we didn’t do it intuitively enough. We went back and forth and back and forth for 6 or 7 months and finally I got it. I was like, if I can do this, anyone can. At first it was a tool for me, that was the initial goal of Clickfunnels. I think it was Todd and Dylan like, “This way Russell will quit bugging and I don’t have to design his sites anymore or redo his headers.” All this stuff that was happening. And then after I started using it and I was having success, I was like, “We have to make this a tool for everyone, it will free all entrepreneurs like it freed me.”

So because of that I was able to create funnels quickly. I went from having 5 or 6 guys, and it would take on average almost 2-3 months every time to create a funnel to where I was able to do it by myself in an hour, hour and a half. Sometimes less, which was cool. The cool thing was I was able to achieve that and have success. We started rolling out funnels like crazy. Some of you probably remember seeing a lot of them.

I still do a lot of them because they’re so much fun to do. But the cooler thing for me was the other side. I was able to make money to support my wife and support my kids because I didn’t no longer have to spend three months doing something, my time to be with my kids completely freed up. I have a chance, I go home everyday and play with my kids. I’m not stressing out trying to talk to programmers in India at 3 in the morning and stressing all this stuff. It just works.

That was really the biggest thing for me. And it’s been an amazing thing. In fact, now my kids are using Clickfunnels, they’re building stuff with Clickfunnels. It’s not just, for me it’s not just a product. It’s a mission. I’m seeing people’s lives change. I’m seeing other people who had messages but they couldn’t get them out because they couldn’t move things around on the stupid page, but now the power is back in their hand. And that’s the power of it. That’s what fires me up, to be able to help entrepreneurs with that kind of thing.

So that’s my Clickfunnels Story. So if you guys haven’t heard it before, I wanted to share that with you guys and share why I’m so passionate about this. For me, it’s not just, I talk about this all the time, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to become a Clickfunnels member, it’s when. Because it’s the only way to do what we’re talking about. The only alternative is to do what I used to do ten years ago. Hire guys in Romania and India and the Philippians and have teams of 30 people to move an image. Or you can just use Clickfunnels. It gives you and me, the entrepreneurs the power back, which is awesome.

I hope that helps you guys. I hope you guys see why I’m so passionate about Clickfunnels. With that said, I’m going to check out. If you like this, comment down below. If you have any friends that are like, “What is that Clickfunnels thing.” Share this with them. Tag them down below so they can see why me and why I’m so passionate and probably why you’re so passionate too. Thanks you guys. Talk to you all soon. Bye.

Alright so there’s the example of an epiphany bridge origin story. I hope that was cool for you guys. Again, I wish I could show you the book today, but it’s coming soon. So look for that in the very, very near future and that’s about it for today you guys. Thanks everybody. I’ll talk to you all again soon.

Feb 6, 2017

The only thing you can change about the situation is your attitude.

On today’s episode Russell talks about his crazy busy week and taking a moment between storms to get a haircut. He also shares a story from his wrestling days that taught him to have a positive attitude.

Here are some interesting things you’ll hear in this episode:

  • How Russell was able to get rid of the echo in the conference room, how he planned a Superbowl party, and how he was able to get a manual done for the FHAT event, all on short notice.
  • Why even when stressful things happen, Russell always tries to have a positive attitude.
  • And why cutting weight in wrestling didn’t seem so bad, as long as Russell had a smile on his face.

So listen below to find out why even if you can’t change your circumstances, changing your attitude will make it better.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson again. I hope you guys are doing awesome. I’m driving to go get my hair cut and this is kind of like the climax, well it’s the end when you slide down. Almost the end, I guess it’s not even though. Anyway, the end of a very crazy week. It’s now Friday. In about an hour we have Boise State does a really cool thing once a year called the Beauty and the Beast tournament. Where they have the wrestlers and the gymnasts all competing on the same floor. And it’s the one time of the year that people actually show up to wrestling matches, which is cool.

I convinced my wife and kids to come and some of my friends and all that kind of stuff, so we’re heading to that tonight. I competed in it for four years and it’s just a super fun thing to do. So I’m going to that tonight which is exciting. I’m getting my hair cut because this is the little calm, that’s what it is, it’s not the climax or apex, it’s the calm before the storm. Because for the second storm. There was a big storm first. This last week has been insane.

Let me explain to you, lest you think you had a busy week. Maybe it was busier than mine, but I’m game for comparing and seeing because this week was crazy. Monday we moved into a new office and then Tuesday I had to submit my book to the publishers, which sounds like you just email your book to the publisher. But no, you have to freaking write a book first and then edit it and edit it, change things, tweak things, and then you submit it and its final, can never change it’s the end. So you can never tweak it, ever. So that was stressful.

And then Steven Larsen, who is working with this even starting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday called the FHAT Event. Funnel Hack A Thon, FHAT Event. We needed a manual for that, which the manual is based on the book. So he was home sick, puking in bed while he’s helping me create this whole manual. Bless him for doing that while he’s puking his guts out. Making the manual and puking and making the manual because we had these printing deadlines to get it done. So we’re racing on that, got that all figured out as good as we possibly could.

Now I’m going through getting my power point slides and then I walked into the conference room that we’re doing the conference, and the echo is so loud, it’s going to destroy all the films, it won’t even be good. So I’m freaking out there, so we have to go and I’m searching all night until 2 or 3 in the morning trying to find sound things you can put up to make echoes disappear. The only place I can find, the fastest I can get them here is 2 to 4 weeks. I’m not going to have them for Monday and I’m stressing out. Then Brandon Fisher on our team,  he’s like, “I got a buddy who does events and stuff and he’s got these sound dampering curtains, we should use those.” So I’m like, “Alright.” So he comes and shows up and wraps our entire room in these huge curtains, throws these lights on them, brings a stage and a pulpit, and it becomes the coolest event center on planet earth.

And then they’re trying to rent us stuff, it will look so cool. I’m begging them to let me buy it all. I never want this to change ever because it’s so cool now. It turned into a good thing. I was stressing out about that. This whole week they’ve been working on that and getting the lighting and the systems and things, and I’m just trying to get my power points done. Then on top of that, there’s other business things, it’s been nuts.

So today I got my power points probably half way done for the event that starts on Monday. I’m just out today, going to get my haircut and then Beauty and the Beast and then tonight keep working on power points, I’m guessing if I’m going to get done in time, which is crazy. Steven had drill so he’s out driving to go do Army drill stuff, and he’s got to work on stuff for the presentation as well. So he’s going to be working on those tonight form the hotel and sending those to me.

And then, I didn’t realize, stupid me, that the Funnel Hack A Thon was the day after the Superbowl, so everyone that’s coming, we have 48 people that are coming. Everyone’s like, “Do you know it’s the Superbowl? Why did you book it on Superbowl Sunday?” I’m like, “I don’t watch the Superbowl.” And they’re like, “We need a party.” And I’m like, “Okay fine, we’ll throw a party.” So now I’m throwing a party at the office Sunday for the Superbowl, which means to get TV in the office, I say yes and then I’m like, “Okay we’re going to watch the Superbowl on this screen and they’re like, “that’s not easy, you have to have cable.” So now they’re scrambling to get cable in our office to be able to show the game.

And then, it’s just thing after thing. We had this nice fridge and we’ve stacked it full of waters and Redbulls and drinks and all sorts of stuff, and then the whole thing collapsed this fridge because the bolts weren’t strong enough and we had to buy new bolts and string them in to get the water to stay. It’s seriously been insane. I just wanted to thank, if anyone on my team is listening, everyone with everything that’s gone into this, because it’s been nuts. But somehow, not only are we surviving, it’s been fun and everyone’s happy. We’re excited and energy levels are really high.

It’s one of those things where maybe it’s me and I know people have ADD like me, the more things that are happening, the better we function. A lot of times if you have one thing going on, you stress out like crazy. So maybe it’s that and that’s why I’m enjoying it and thriving in this. Because there’s so much chaos I can’t not do it. But maybe it’s just a fact that just smiling, keep moving forward, maybe that’s the message for today is, if you keep moving forward, you can’t change anything. I can’t change the fact that the event is happening in two days. I made that decision and it was probably a dumb decision. Especially since we have Funnel Hacking Live two weeks later and I haven’t started on my presentations for that yet.

But besides the point of stupidly planning like I often do, things can’t change. You’re going to do it anyway. I think I’ve shared this story with you before. I had a wrestling coach named Mark James when I was growing up. I remember this one practice, it was tough. At the time I was cutting about 30 pounds a week, it was painful, horrible and hard. We’re all cutting weight and I remember one day after practice, I was dead. Imagine wrestling in plastics and sweats and not eating for three or four days and not drinking for three or four and just being to the point where you felt like you wished you could die.

And I remember we finished practice and he pulls us all into this, our wrestling room, we called it the rubber room. It was underneath the basketball court. It was dark and damp and stinky and it was kind of nasty. So he pulled us out of the rubber room into this hallway, that was again underneath the building. It was dark. And he sat on the stairs and we all sat around and talked. And I remember him saying, “You know what, we have a match and you have to lose weight.” And he’s telling everyone this, and he’s like, “You can’t change that, the only thing you can change is your attitude about it. You’re going to miserable going through this experience or you can be happy going through this experience, but you can’t change it. The experience is happening.”

“The only thing we can effect is the attitude we have going through it. So you might as well have a good attitude, because you’re going to do it anyway.”  And it really, I was like, “Dang.” So I remember the next day I came down and I put on my plastics and sweats on and came out and started jumping ropes. And I started smiling.

And one of the other guys on my team came down and was like, “Why are you smiling?” And I was like, “Have you ever seen someone lose with a smile on their face?” and he was like, “No.” And I’m like, “Neither have I.” and I kept smiling. And then I smiled the whole practice while I was cutting weight, I smiled while I was doing it. And it was weird because this process that legitimately painful. If you’ve ever tried to not drink for three days while sucking water weight out in plastic suits. Where you’re losing, on average, 25 to 30 pounds a week in water weight. That’s painful. That’s probably some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. But I did it with a smile on my face and it became a thing, and it became fun and it became a part of the experience I actually enjoyed.

In fact, tonight going to the wrestling match, I can feel myself right now, feeling guilty. I always feel guilty sitting there drinking something. I shouldn’t be watching wrestling with liquid. This is a really awkward feeling, you know what I mean? But that’s the reality. I’m not wrestling, I’m not competing so I can. Take that wrestlers that are cutting weight. But going through the experience, it became fun.

So I think for you guys, there’s a lot of stress out there, I get it. But as you approach it, do it with a smile on your face. Because you can’t lose with a smile on your face. No one can, it’s impossible. So you might as well smile as you go through it. Remember, you’re going to go through it anyway, so the only thing you can change is your attitude, so have a good attitude and make it more fun and pleasant for you and for everyone.

So that’s what I got today you guys. I’m here, getting my haircut, my head will shrink by about half, which is a good sign. Because I got a huge fat head, if you’ve ever noticed. I can’t wear hats, because my head is so…….if you guys remember the movie so I married an Axe Murderer. And that kid’s sitting in front of the TV with his dad, Michael Meyers. He’s like, “Hey, get out of the way. Man, did you see that kid’s head? It’s like an orange on a toothpick.” That’s totally how I am right now. So if you’re envisioning what I look like, I got an orange on a toothpick, so they’re going to shave this thing down to be normal size, which I’m really looking forward to.

Alright guys, before I tell you anymore random weird things about me, I’m going to leave. I appreciate you all, have an amazing day. Keep a smile on, and remember you can only change your attitude. Thanks everybody, talk to you soon.

Ps…Don’t forget, you’re just one funnel away, thanks everybody.

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