Why having resources will actually hurt you as an entrepreneur and how to become more resourceful.
On today’s episode Russell comes to you from his favorite place on Earth, Pirates Cove. He gives a mini tour of the premises and talks about how he was able to afford the $100,000 that it took to rent it by being resourceful. Here are some of the cool things in this episode:
So listen up and enjoy as Russell talks about how he was able to be resourceful enough to be at Pirates Cove without spending a single penny.
---Transcript---
Hey Everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast happening today from Pirates Cove.
Alright everyone, if you’re watching the video of this, you can see I’m at the most ridiculous place on earth. If you’re listening to this, go to marketingsecrets.com and actually watch the video. I’m right now at a place called Pirates Cove, at a mastermind group. It’s insane.
See behind me, these are my kids swinging on the ropes and having fun in the water and a bunch of other amazing things. This is pretty much the craziest place I’ve ever been. It’s my favorite place on earth. Some of the back story about Pirates Cove. Again, those of you watching can see some of the scenery of this place, but basically, the back story when my twins, which this is Bowen, one of my twins right here, when they were about 6 months old, we were speaking at an event here in Las Vegas, which is where Pirates Cove is at. One of my friends had come to this place and kind of told stories about how amazing it was. He started explaining, and no matter how cool he made it sound, you’re like, “That sounds cool.” He’s like, “No you guys, you have to see it. I’m going to take you and we’re going to try to find it.”
So we started driving around, all over Las Vegas, all over Boulder City, trying to find this place called Pirates Cove, and we couldn’t find it anywhere. So we gave up and went out to eat in Boulder City, and we’re sitting there and all the sudden the owner of Pirates Cove walked out and my buddy’s like, “That’s the owner.” So we walked up to him, “hey you don’t know us, but I’ve been to Pirates Cove, it would be super cool if you could let us see it.” The guy was so cool and was like, “come on up.” And he gave us swimming suits and we swam the entire day. Like I said, Bowen here was only 6 months old, he was in diapers, we had the most amazing time ever.
And if you see this place, it’s basically on the side of this mountain, it’s a private residence, there’s 5 houses on it, there’s waterslides, in fact, I’ll take you guys up on the video so you can see the top. There’s a kid waterslide and a really cool kid pool, and then up at the top there is this huge waterslide that’s for adults, that is crazy. You go down this huge slide and then it enters into the middle of the part, there’s a huge boat, and a pirate mast, you actually jump off it. In fact, on Funnel Hacker TV you can see some video of me jumping off it. It’s pretty crazy.
So I’ll keep showing you as I’m walking around. I want to teach you guys a really cool lesson. So after we came I was like, “I want to rent this.” I want to take my family here and show everybody. So the next year we called the guy up and we were like, “We want to rent Pirates Cove, how much would that cost.” And he was like, “Oh it’s $10,000 a day with a weeklong minimum.” It was $70 or 80 thousand dollars. I was like, what? I didn’t have that kind of money at the time. I was like, “gah. But I really want to rent pirates cove, there’s gotta be a way I can rent this and show my family and my kids and experience this again.”
So the wheels in my head started spinning. And again, this comes down to Robert Kiyosaki 101. Poor people say, “I can’t afford that.” Rich people think, “How can I afford that? What can I do to be able to afford that?” So I’m thinking what do I gotta do to make $70,000 to rent this place, but obviously catering and everything else. I was like for me to do that, it’s going to cost a lot of money. I’m going to need almost a hundred grand to do it. So I was like, okay what if I found a whole bunch of cool people and invited them to come to this thing and I sold tickets to it?
So that was the idea, so what we did is basically. We went and I put out a little page and said, “10 people pay $10,000, and that’s $100,000 and covers the cost of the entire mastermind group and then we can rent it. We’ll just have a really good time.” We’ll have for it half the week for all the mastermind and when the mastermind is over, we’ll still have it for 2 or 3 days at the end, then we’ll invite my family members, at the time a bunch of employees, things like that. And that was kind of the game plan. We did it and it worked and it was amazing.
So that was the first time I had a chance to experience Pirates Cove for a whole week. Since then we’ve done it, I think this is the fourth time we’ve done it. We did it 3 years in a row then we took off 4 or 5 years, because it’s a lot of work as well. And then this year we decided to do it again. So I’m here right now with 10 entrepreneurs and we’re just having the most amazing mastermind meetings during the day when it’s 116 degrees out here. Then at night we’re playing and having fun. Our kids are here and it’s insanely cool. So that’s happening right now at Pirates Cove. Again, if you want to see some visuals of this place, go to Marketingsecrets.com and watch the video.
But the lesson I want to tell you guys is this, and hopefully you kind of got a little piece of the lesson. It comes back to what Robert Kiyosaki said, poor people say, “I can’t afford that.” Where rich people think, “How can I afford that?” So I couldn’t afford this place, I couldn’t afford to rent it, but I wanted to experience it and I wanted other people to experience it. So I had to starts thinking outside the box. What do I need to do to be able to afford that? How do I get other people to help chip in so we can actually experience this and make it an amazing thing?
In fact, a lot of my early joint venture partnerships came from people I invited to Pirates Cove. I say, you take someone to Pirates Cove, they think you’re pretty cool afterwards, which helped. I was trying to build relationships and grow companies and things like that. But for you, what I want you thinking about, a lot of times, as an entrepreneur, I’m not telling you to go rent Pirates Cove and do something crazy like that. But a lot of times the reason why entrepreneurs aren’t successful in business is because they have this weird resource problem. “Ah, Russell I don’t have the resources, the time, the talents.” It’s all I have don’t the resources. You have to understand that entrepreneurship is not about having resources. That’s a fallacy, it’s incorrect.
Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs not because they have resources, but because they’re resourceful. Sounds very similar, but it’s different. They’re resourceful. I was resourceful, I had to think outside the box. How can I create this thing? A bunch of you guys have heard my rant many time about venture capitalists. I don’t feel real entrepreneurs take VC, because they’re coming in saying, “ I don’t have the resources, let me go ask somebody to give me money, then I’ll have resources to go and build something.” By definition you doing that, you’re not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are resourceful, they look at things and say, “how can I afford that?” They look at something and say, “I don’t have the resources, I have to be resourceful, I have to think of other ways to do it.”
My very first thing I ever created, Mark Joyner, who is my first mentor and one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Here’s my Ellie, she’s here hanging out too. You want to say hi? You having fun? I’m almost done, babe.
Okay, so when he kind of retired from the internet marketing, coaching business, he put out a thing called The Farewell Package, and he sold it and I bought it. And at the time I had no resources, I paid a thousand bucks for this course and it was all the money we had and my credit card was maxed out afterwards, and I had no resources. I was like, okay everything I bought from Mark Joyner, I needed to hire programmers and developers to be able to execute and actually create that thing, but I didn’t have the resources. I’m like, “Crap, what am I going to do? I don’t have the resources to create it.” I’m like, I’m an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are resourceful. So I gotta be resourceful, what should I do?
I was like, okay, I have ideas. I know if I did have money, what I would do. So I was like, this is what I would create if I did have money. I wrote it out and went, at the time we had this little forum with everyone who had purchased his product. I was like, “Look guys, I bought this thing with the last of my money, I’m completely broke. But I know what I would do if I had the money I would create this thing.” And I pitched everyone on this thing. I was like, “The deal is, I’m broke. I have no resources, but I am very resourceful. And I know a lot of you guys are in the same situation, so my question for you is how many of you guys would like to partner up together and we pool our resources and become resourceful and work together.” And I posted that and said, “I gotta a quote and it costs about $5000 to build this idea I have. I got 0 dollars, so I need 50 of you guys to give me $100 and we can create something from our resources, become resources.”
And I had 120-130 people like, “I’ll do it, I’m in.” all these people saying, “I’ll donate $100 to this thing, to be a part of it.” And I was like, “cool.” So I collected all my, I ended up, I had 120 people say they would and then as it often happens, only 55 or something actually gave the hundred bucks. So it was $5,500 that I suddenly had in my paypal account and everyone bought together this package and then I went and took the money and hired the development team and they started creating it and that’s how I launched my first viral website. A lot of you guys don’t know that story. I don’t tell it very often.
But it was about not the resource, I had 0 resources. All I had was a credit card with a $1000 bill on it, because that’s what I paid to buy his course and 0 dollars. I didn’t have a job, I was wrestling. So I was making exactly 0 dollars a month, 0 dollars a year. And my wife was making $9.50 an hour, so that was our resources and now I have a thousand dollars on my credit card and I was freaking out because I don’t know how to pay a thousand dollars.
So luckily I was resourceful and I found people that allowed the funding from other people who wanted to be a part of this project, we launched it and started building a list, used that to launch the next product and on and on and on and here we are 15 years later at Pirates Cove with 10 of the most amazing entrepreneurs in the world, and I’m here with my family and my friends, a bunch of my employees and my partners are coming and I didn’t pay a penny to be here. Because I was resourceful.
So for you, I want you guys to understand that’s why we’re entrepreneurs, we are resourceful. You are resourceful. All you gotta do is stop trying to ask people for money to fund your idea, and just start creating, being resourceful. What can I do? How can I get other people involved and get other people to believe in my vision. When you start learning how to sell, people will come to you and you can create cool things. So there is my message for tonight. Those of you guys who guys who are watching the visuals behind me, hopefully you had a cool little glimpse of Pirates Cove. We’ve got a couple of Funnel Hacker TV episodes coming out that will show the craziness. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this and you start thinking about that in your business and your life. It’s not just business, it’s all aspects of life. How do you be resourceful? You rarely will have the resources you need to get started. IF you’re resourceful you can do it. So that’s what I got. I’m out of here you guys. I’m going to go get my swimsuit on and I’m going to jump in the water, bye everybody.