A personal message to a friend who is struggling.
On this extra long episode Russell talks to a friend from elementary school about how to go from being a technician and having a cap on his income to being a rainmaker and having an unlimited ceiling on his income. Here are some cool things you will hear on this episode:
So listen to Russell explain how to go from being technician to making it rain!
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to an insanely late night Marketing Secrets podcast. I am here, for those watching on tv, I’m in the car. Over there you can see Norah. It is late, insanely late. In one minute it will be midnight here and we’re about to take you guys on a very special Marketing Secrets Podcast.
Alright, I hope you guys are doing amazing. Right now my little baby Norah and I are on a mission. It’s a secret mission to get her to hopefully fall asleep. We started weaning her off the bottle about a week ago before our family vacation because we thought it would be so much nicer to not have bottles on this trip. That was a good idea, huh Norah.
But what we didn’t think about was the fact that she’s insane and now she won’t go to bed at all. She won’t take naps, since her naps happen when she finally passes on. We got back from the lake, we’re on a family vacation, we went to the lake and had a really good time, and then she wouldn’t fall asleep and we were driving back and forth and finally when I went to the store to buy something for dinner tonight. When we were coming back she passed out and she slept for 3 hours. She was so beat. Then she woke up and now she won’t go back to bed.
So this is the second night in a row. Last night I was also out driving until about midnight, 12:30 she fell asleep last night. It’s 12:00 right now, hopefully in less than 30 minutes she will be asleep. But I am on vacation having a good time. If you listen to my last Marketing Secrets podcast it talked about how vacations can be really tough for entrepreneurs. I feel like we’re not moving, there’s no momentum. We’re stuck in a spot. That’s somewhere that I definitely feel.
As much fun as vacation is it’s also hard for me, I got stuff to do, people to see, places to go. Actually, it’s interesting as I was packing the car up as I was about to leave, between hiking stuff in and out to the car and everything I was checking Facebook and it’s interesting. There was a friend who I don’t think I’ve seen him, I think the last time we talked was in elementary school. I remember 6th grade, it’s kind of a funny story. In 6th grade we were moving these big boxes and he had this big box and he dropped it. I don’t know why I remember this, but I remember him saying it was super embarrassing to drop this box of stuff and he was saying, “Someday this is going to be one of those things that people remember me by. Remember that day you dropped this huge box.” I remember thinking that was really interesting.
And now, it’s 30 years later and I remember that day, it’s kind of funny. But anyway, I remember he was in junior high and high school with me but he was a basketball player and I was a wrestler so we didn’t really cross paths a lot. But I knew who he was and grew up in elementary school and I always had respect for him. When the book of faces came out, Zuckerberg, it was kind of fun because you can go back and remember high school, junior high, and elementary school friends. And people from wrestling and different aspects of your life and you start adding them on Facebook. So he was one of the names that popped up years ago, I added him and hadn’t thought much more about it.
Every once in a while I saw posts from him, so I kind of knew what he was doing, but not a lot. He shifted his job or his business or career a couple of times and didn’t seem like he was having a lot of success. I remember it seems like last Christmas or something, he posted something really negative and I felt bad for him. But it’s also one of those things that when I first started my business and started learning about entrepreneurship and learning how to sell things and all this world became open to me, I remember at first I wanted to share with everybody. I tried to share with friends, family members, people at church, everyone I bumped into.
I was so excited to tell this thing that I had learned. I was so excited I would share with every single person. It was so mind blowing to me that most people just “Oh, cool. Nice.” I’m like you don’t understand it’s not just nice. It was so frustrating to me. But it’s funny because that was, I always tried to change everybody and save them and help them because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. After a couple of years of that I realized that none of the people I tried to help ever did anything with it. It was really depressing me, so that’s when I shifted back and started doing the business for a long time.
I think I got into coaching because I wanted to share it, and it was cool when I started coaching. It was people who would come, people who it was their idea first and came to me to learn how to do it. Those people I could mold, help and change because they had the desire first. It’s because of that I’ve been very cautious the last decade of my life going out of my way to talk to people about this stuff unless they raised their hand first.
So I saw him last December say something and I didn’t see my spot to say something, so I didn’t say anything. Then as I was leaving, I was going through Facebook, again we’re packing the cars and I’m sneaking out to do what you do with the phones. So I see this post, this long post and it was again a negative thing and he was talking about how much he was struggling and trying to make money and all these things, and I think he said that this last year he made $25,000, and that was what he made in an entire year. He was really struggling and trying to make things better for his family, life and wife and he couldn’t figure it out and was just frustrating and was just kind of venting.
How you doing Norah? She’s so cute back there. I hope she falls asleep soon.
Anyway, I felt for him. I was just like, do I say something or not. For whatever reason I decided to just reach out to him. I was like “Hey man, the problem..We haven’t talked in 20+ years, I don’t know if you know who I am. The problem is you’re not focusing on the right thing. I can help you but I don’t want to intrude, it’s not my business. I can help you, I know what’s wrong, it’s an easy fix. In the last year and a half, few years we’ve helped. I’ve been a coach to almost 200 people now to become a millionaire. Tens of thousands of people to make 100 thousand or more in year. I know the game, I know what it takes and what it doesn’t take.” I said something like that and my next post was, I wish I could read it right now. “I’m not trying to pitch you on some MLM. I honestly, if you want help I can help you because I know what’s wrong.”
He was like, “Really? Yeah, I want to know.” So I told him a couple of things and I said, “If you do those things, I’ll record a podcast for you while I’m on my trip and kind of go into more detail.” So this last 3 days I keep thinking about that and I’m excited so that’s what I’m actually doing right now and I hope it benefits all of you guys. Because I think for most people who are stuck, it’s not something that unique to you, it’s not. A lot of times we think our situation’s unique, but it’s not. It’s a pattern that happens over and over again. The key to breaking patterns is recognizing it and realizing what the correct pattern is and replacing it. It’s not hard, it’s just hard because it’s the first time most people have gone through it personally.
So that’s kind of the context. I just wanted to share this message, it’s really for him, I’m not going to go super specific, but I think it’ll be helpful for everybody. I know that typical people I talk to in this podcast are people who are entrepreneurs already and this is kind of I guess for someone who’s on that line between the job maybe and the entrepreneur. That line where it’s like, you’re not fully an entrepreneur running this way, but you’re struggling at the job thing and you’re in between. That’s what this podcast is for and I hope it kind of helps.
With that said, I’m going to jump into this. So the first thing that I kind of told him in the message, the first thing is you’re focusing on the wrong thing. And he’s like, “I’ve been focusing on perfecting my craft.” And just kind of some perspective, the industry he’s going into is film. So he’s trying to do movies and videos and all that kind of stuff. So he’s like, “I’m focusing on getting better at my craft and I’m also doing a lot of networking.” So I go, “okay, yes. You are completely focusing on the wrong two things. You are focusing on things to help you get better at your thing, but you have to shift your focus to making money.” That’s a weird concept because it’s something that I remember the first time I had that epiphany. I need to learn how to make money. I was in school learning all this crap and I’m looking at this stuff and studying and I was like, I’m not actually learning how to make money. I still remember one of my biggest gripes with college is I took two semesters of accounting and two semesters of finance and they never once taught you how to do your own taxes, which is insane. School sucks.
Just throwing that out there for those who are wondering my thoughts on the whole thing. But it’s crazy the fact that they don’t teach you that thing. And I realized I’m not learning how to make money here in school. And I started studying how to make money. It was interesting how different it was. It’s not what you’re learning in school. And now fast forward, I think it’s been, let’s see…it’ll be my 15th anniversary in a month from now and we got married with a year left in school. So 14 years I’ve been graduated from school. Looking back on it now from this sign. Sorry I’m waiting for a stop light, but there’s no stop light, there’s a stop sign. Little Norah’s still awake.
Anyway, as I look at it now from this lens looking back, it’s interesting, a lot of times we want something. I remember growing up, you always hear your parents and people say you gotta go to school to get a good education so you can make good money. We all heard that. That’s a thing that parents say a lot. So we assume that those two things coincide. Good job, good education equals more money. But not necessarily. Now I look at again from my perspective, 14 years later, it’s interesting.
I was thinking about this a lot over the last two or three days especially. If you want to look at the structure of how people make money, because there’s definitely, there’s you make money and there’s places you don’t. And most places you’re focusing on, like when he said he was focusing on getting better at his skills in networking. He’s focusing on something that’s good, but it’s not making money. So I’m going to start at the top.
The top is a pure entrepreneur, so the top of a business, the hierarchy chart, so the top is the entrepreneur who starts the business. Typically, at least the entrepreneurs that I like to work with, the entrepreneurs are passionate about something, but their mostly passionate, not just about that thing, but getting that thing out to people. That’s what defines an entrepreneur. If any of you guys have read the Emyth, by Michael Gerber, he talks about what happens with a lot people is they think they’re entrepreneurs, and they get a job at the bakery shop and start baking cakes. They see the owner of a bakery shop and they’re like, “This guy is an idiot and I could do better than him.” And then what Michael Gerber says is that they have an entrepreneurial seizure.
They think they’re smarter so they start their own bakery. The problem is that they’re not an actual entrepreneur, they’re a technician. They’re somebody who is in the business who is doing it. They’re making the bread, the cakes, the stuff but they look at the entrepreneur who they think is an idiot, so they have the entrepreneurial seizure and say they want be the entrepreneur and start their own business and say, “I can make bread better than anyone else. I can make cakes.” And they’re passionate about the thing and create the business and what happens to the business? It fails.
It has a 90+% failure rate. Because it’s technicians, it’s people who think that the key is the thing. They think that the cake is what runs the business. It’s their passion about the cake, the creation of the cake, they don’t understand that that’s not the business. In the business the entrepreneur’s job is being passionate about getting the cake out to as many people as possible. That’s where the money’s at. That’s why most businesses fail. Because it’s not the entrepreneur running it, it’s someone who had an entrepreneurial seizure and is a technician and is trying to do that thing and thinks they should start a business because of it.
My first question for everyone listening to this, are you the entrepreneur? The good news is we go deeper into this…….holy cow, a deer just crossed the path……There are ways to make money, not as an entrepreneur in a business. But it’s not where you probably think that they are. I’m just thinking for example, a doctor. Doctors make good money. How many times did you hear that you have to become a doctor to make good money, or a dentist to make good money. So those people make good money, but not there’s no limit to your income money. Because a doctor is a technician. They are just highly paid technician because a lot of school goes into it. But they’re still a technician. They’re not an entrepreneur, they have a definite cap on their income growth, always.
So just depending on what technician you pick. Let’s say you’re going into a company to get a job, you’re capped by the earning potential of that role you take on. If you’re a doctor, a dentist, a baker, support person. You’re capped at whatever that thing is, which is fine, it’s just knowing that’s where you’re capped at.
If you want no cap, the first spot you have to look at is entrepreneur. But to be an entrepreneur you have to understand that it’s not being passionate about the creation of the thing, it’s being passionate about the selling of the thing. There’s a big reason why I wrote the Expert Secrets book. It’s because typically Experts who are really passionate about their topic are also passionate about getting their topic out. By definition they are entrepreneur’s because they are trying to get the message out about that thing. They own the bakery, they make the cake, but they’re more excited aobut telling people about the cake. That’s what makes them successful about entrepreneurs. That’s why I love working with entrepreneurs.
So there’s the top of the….let me flip the car around, I’m getting out to no man’s land now. So that’s the top of this pyramid scheme of business. I don’t know if you want to call it that. But the entrepreneurs are at the top. And that’s what most people look at. The entrepreneur is the person that makes all the money. But they’re all the person who risk everything. Entrepreneurship is a scary thing because you have no earning potential at the top, but you’re also the one with all the risk on your back. For a lot of people you can’t just go out and become an entrepreneur immediately, especially if you have a wife and kids. Because you have to have security. There’s this huge draw with people who have entrepreneurial desires, but they also have security needs between your family.
So that’s a hard thing to just gamble and jump and say “I’m going to become an entrepreneur.” And I understand that. So a lot of times the entrepreneur is not the first place for people. I feel super blessed. I started my entrepreneurial journey about the time I met my wife and I was able to do a lot of things because she supported me, I was going to school and we didn’t have kids. We didn’t have this need for security at this point when I was getting started, which I’m so grateful for. I have so much respect for those that step into the entrepreneurial role when they have those things because it’s so much harder.
So it’s always easier to start being an entrepreneur and risking everything when you don’t have a wife and kids and things. So that’s kind of one thing. That’s one spot. Again, there’s different places to make money in companies, so there’s the best spot, maybe not the best spot, but one spot. The entrepreneur at the top, that’s number one.
Then underneath the entrepreneur inside the organization there’s gotta be technicians, doing the things, baking the cakes, cleaning the teeth, cutting people open, the technicians. This is what schooling is actually…the only reason school is actually good is because it creates technicians. If you want to be a doctor you have to go to school. If you want to be able to drill teeth, you gotta go to school. If you want to become a baker or a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, any profession.
Another deer just ran by. I don’t want to hit a deer. That would be scary.
But any profession, that’s what schooling is for. So when you’re going into school you are thinking about that. Any major you decide to go after, there’s a kind of associated salary range you’re going to fit into. Sometimes it’s big, like doctors make good money. But you’re always capped. A technician will always be capped, by definition of what they are. You just are. If you’re coming into a business and You’re a technician looking at this, you’re capped. Your salary is capped.
So my friend who is doing video stuff, he’s looking for jobs in a business where he’s the technician. Again, he was saying in his post that he made $25,000 last year, because the need you are filling inside whatever company you are trying to plug into. That’s what they have budgeted for that. That’s what you’re able to make. You’re capped. You can’t go above that, unless you work more hours, more days. Sometimes you find another company that has a bigger budget. That’s another thing, and again there’s nothing wrong with a technician, it’s understanding that there’s a salary that’s set for that thing. There’s a budget set and that’s what happens.
The goal of a business is not to make the technician rich. I had a finance teacher at Boise State, tell you what, most teachers I had at school were always like, “What’s the job of a business?” “To create jobs, stimulate the economy.” They always had this happy go lucky, tree hugging attitude about business. I had this one finance teacher that said the only goal of a business is to make the owners money. That’s it. If the entrepreneur, the owner is not making money, the board of directors, whoever is running it, if they’re not making money, the business dies. That’s the only purpose and only point of a business is to make the entrepreneur money. Everybody’s got to understand that.
If you’re a technician there is no desire for anybody for you to make more money than what your set salary is. You’re going to find entrepreneurs, in my company I’m very compassionate towards people and I love what they do. I love creating things for people and having incentive plans, but for the most part, as a technician you’re in that range. You have to understand if you’re going to school, that’s the earning range you’re going to be in. Are you okay with that? If you are, cool. Go for it. That’s awesome.
But don’t complain later when you come back and say I’m not making what I want. You picked a profession, you picked being a technician, you picked this piece and that’s all it’s worth. It doesn’t matter how much school you went to or how much time and effort you put into it, that’s what that task is worth to the entrepreneur. You have to understand that, technicians are essential to a business, they need to be there. That’s what colleges, universities, programs were all created for, to create those people. Those people are important. But again, that’s the pros and cons of that.
Check it out guys, look at this. Pan over. She’s asleep. 12:19, it’s a good sign. This podcast might not be three hours long now that she’s asleep. Otherwise, it could have been a really long one.
Alright, there you go. Entrepreneur, unlimited potential, tons of risk and the role, the reason why an entrepreneur’s successful is because they’re passionate about the selling of the thing. Getting the message out, not just the message. Not just passionate about making cakes, but passionate about getting the cakes in as many people’s mouths as possible because they’re obsessed with the end product. That’s the difference. There’s entrepreneurs.
Number two level down in this pyramid is the technicians, who are the one’s doing the jobs to make this whole thing happen. Super essential but have huge earning caps, depending on what technician role you picked makes your earning cap. There’s one spot, and this is the spot that I want everybody to understand because this is the other spot inside of a company where you have no earning potential. Excuse me, I said it wrong. You have no earning ceiling, you have unlimited earning potential. Scratch that, that could have been really bad and messed up the whole thing. You have unlimited earning potential, literally the sky is the limit.
That last piece, so we have entrepreneurs, we have technicians, and the third are the rain makers. They’re people that make it rain. They’re people that bring leads and money into the business. They’re the rain makers. Now entrepreneurs love rain makers, why? Because they make it rain. Do you guys understand that? That’s the secret sauce. Most technicians don’t understand that. Because all they know is I went to school to learn this thing to do this task, so they do it and do it. But the person that gets rewarded the most, outside the entrepreneur of the company, are the rain makers.
Typically in most, not most, but a lot of businesses that I own, that I’m involved with, the rain makers a lot of times are entrepreneurs who maybe if they would have started their entrepreneur journey ten years earlier, they would be the entrepreneur of the business. But for whatever reason they’re not. So they came, they can have, a lot of times we call them intrapreneurs. In their role in the company, they have the ability to grow and expand as much as they want. They’re rain makers. What do they do? They make it rain. They bring in customers and make money. They bring money into the company.
So if you look at this from an outside perspective, if you selling this stuff in college terms. It’s marketing and sales. Marketing brings people in, sales takes their money. That’s kind of what it is. And it’s funny because, I don’t know what it was, even like most technicians, if you go to school and you tell someone you want to be a sales person, the viewpoint, or even marketing, I’m in marketing, or I’m in sales, the technicians are the ones who are always looking down on you. “oh, I’m a doctor.” They look down on the rain makers because they think it’s a sub….I don’t know. They think it’s not as good, not as dignified.
What they don’t understand is that the rainmakers make the money. It is the most dignified, most important position in the entire company. Without the rain maker’s the technician has no job. Without someone bringing people into your business and then getting the money from those people, there’s nobody to be a technician to. You make as many cakes as you want, but if some dude didn’t bring those people into the store and take their money, they’re not going to buy a cake. It’s the most important role in the business, outside the entrepreneur who sets the initial risk to get it going.
So even though the technicians talk down on us marketing and sales people, it happens to be the most important role in every single business. You can tell when businesses are stupid, when recessions come and they cut their marketing teams and they cut their sales teams. It’s insane to me. I had a chance in my life to live through one of the recessions, 2008. I had a bunch of friends who were in marketing jobs and they were making it rain for the company and the company started struggling so they cut the marketing. I’m like, you’re insane. Cut the technicians, they don’t do anything. Don’t cut the blood coming into your company. Marketing and sales is the blood, it is the rain. The rain makers are the key.
So rain makers. They don’t have a ceiling, in most businesses now days. Especially if you become good at it and not a little bit good, but really good. You can come to a company and say, “I can bring in unlimited leads for you.” Guess what they will do? They will give you anything you want. All company need leads. The other thing they need, sales. They take those leads and turn them into cash, turn them into money. That’s how the entrepreneur gets paid, that’s how the technicians get paid. It’s by the rain makers. Bringing people in and taking their money. That’s it. We can try to be romantic about it, but that is it.
You have to understand, if you want to be wealthy, and I’m not talking about making good money as a technician, because you can do that. You gotta go to school, that sucks. If you want to become wealthy, become rich, make a lot of money. You have to shift your focus from becoming good at being a technician, to understanding how to make it rain. If you can make it rain in a business, you are infinitely valuable. As a technician you are only valuable as that task is to the person, to the company. They know, they got a budget for it. There you go.
So if you’re working for a company saying, I do video. Guess what? They have a budget for that. We pay video guys $3 an hour, $12 an hour, whatever that is, $20 an hour.
For my friend, the company you are working for, they budget $25 grand so that’s all the money you are able to get. Because you’re a video person, you’re a commodity. That’s the other thing about technicians is they’re commodities. It’s funny, I was talking to my sister the other day here at our family vacation or whatever, and she teaches piano lessons. I love my sister, she’s honestly in my top 3 favorite people on planet earth. She’s teaches piano and she’s like, “I’m so busy, I can’t keep up with anything.” And I said, “you should double your prices.” And she’s like, “I can’t double my prices.” And I’m like, “Why not?” and she’s like, “If I double my prices I will lose half my people.” I’m like, “okay, well you lose half your people but you double the money, that means you get double the free time for the same amount of money.” And she’s like, “I can’t do that because that’s the set price for what people charge for piano lessons where I live. So if I raise my prices, they’ll just go to somebody else.” I’m like, “Because you’re a commodity. Guess how much people pay for marketing consulting advice?” She’s like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Neither do I, but I don’t look what everybody else charges and charge the same thing, I charge the most I possibly can.”
For example we had somebody contact our office and they wanted to do a one day consult with me and I was like, “I don’t have time for a one day consult.” And they’re like, “Well, how much would it cost?” and I told Brent to tell them it’s $100 grand and they can do 8 hours and they have to come to Boise and I’m going home at 5:00 to be with my kids. He kind of laughed because he knew they wouldn’t say yes to that. He went and pitched it to them and came back 5 minutes later. He’s like, “They said yes.” And I was like, “There you go.”
Want to know why? Because I’m not a commodity. When you’re a video person you’re a commodity. When you are any kind of technician you are a commodity. When you’re a doctor, you’re still a commodity because guess why? Another doctor comes along and he’s better than you or less expensive than you, whatever. They can replace you with the other person because you are a commodity. The rain makers are not commodities. That’s what you have to understand.
The rain makers are unique. They understand something that they can’t just learn in school. They know how to get, especially in school because there’s no school that I know of yet, that teaches a marketing program that is actually good. So there you go. So if you’re in school trying to become a rain maker, you should drop out today. If you want to be a technician stick to school. If you want to be a rain maker, it’s time to leave.
If you’re in school, honestly if you’re trying to do a sport. That’s why I was in school. Do that. If you’re trying to find a beautiful spouse, school is agreat place to meet great looking women and probably good looking men, I have no idea. But that’s a great spot to be in school, but just til you find your spouse and then leave. It’s time to go. If you want to make it rain, it’s time to go.
The rain makers are the ones that are not a commodity. There’s no cost associated, people don’t budget that out. Because they are like, I don’t know. If I came to a company and was like, “I’m going to build you guys a sales funnel and this funnel has potential to bring you unlimited leads for forever and make you unlimited amounts of money.” They’re like, “How much does that cost?” I’m like, “However much I want to charge you for it.” They can’t price shop. How are you going to price that? Russell Brunson charges 100 grand for a day. How do you price shop that? Go to somebody else? Ask Gary V. “What do you cost?” and he’ll give you his price but he’s going to teach way differently than I would. If you want what I got, I’m the only one that’s got it. You gotta pay me what I want to charge you for it. I’m not a commodity.
If you’re a great sales person, you’re not a commodity. Great sales people are rare. If you’re an amazing sales person you can walk into any organization and say, “hand me your leads. I just want 20% of everything. I eat what I kill. I’m going to 20% of what I kill.” There’s no business on earth that I know of, that if you walked in and said “Look don’t pay me, just give me all your leads. I want 20% of what I kill.” Almost all of them will say yes to that. Because you’re a rain maker. You have no ceiling. Just kill a whole bunch of stuff and you get your cut.
Same thing with the person who is making it rain, bringing the leads in the door. A lot of times you’re like, “Russell, I’m a video guy, I’m whatever. I don’t know how to make it rain. Right now I’m basically a technician. I’m plugged into this technician thing.” You gotta start studying, not how to become a technician, you’ve got to become good at your craft, I agree with that. You have to become obsessed with it, but you have to become good at understanding how to make money.
The study of making money is the key. So how do I make money? It’s understanding if you’re a video person, doing video is a commodity. But if I can understand how to use video to bring in the leads, it changes things because now I’m not a commodity. I’ve got a friend who charges 100,000 to make you a video, plus 10% of any money that video ever makes you. Technically he’s no better than anybody else. In fact, some would argue he’s a lot worse at video than most people, but he knows how to take that video and have it turned into cash and bring in customers. He knows how to use it to make it rain.
So for those of you guys who are in my world, I’ve got some tools to help you learn how to take whatever technicians skills you have and learn how to make it rain. So I told my friend, I gave him some advice, “I’ll record this podcast but you have to do some things for me first. First thing you need to do is go back to this podcast, Marketing In Your Car, first hundred episodes there’s a cheesy jingle. Next 200 episodes there’s a less cheesy jingle, still cheesy. And then recently we transformed it into the Marketing Secrets podcast, which I really like the name and the new jingle is freaking amazing.” Don’t you guys agree? So we’ve got that.
I said, “Go and listen to every episode, start at episode one and go through all of them. What’s going to happen is you’re going to immerse yourself in how to become a rain maker. You’ll learn a bunch of random crap and none of it’s going to tie together, but it’s going to get your mind immersed in this mindset. And if you don’t like me or my voice, you can go find someone else. But find someone who is obsessed with marketing and sales. And he ranks the stuff that people pay unlimited money for and start immersing yourself. Listening to it all day every single day so your mind is just wrapped into the concepts. With geeking out and going deep with my podcast, your mind is going to get into it but you’re not going to have a blueprint, but you’re going to have all these thoughts going through your head all over the place. It won’t be a path, but it will be immersion. Immersion is the key.”
Tony Robins talks about this a lot and I’m a big believer in pretty much everything tony says because he’s a giant and he’s got stage presence like nobody else and he’s amazing and a billion other reasons. Tony’s the man. He taught me about immersion. If you want to learn something, don’t dabble. There’s dabblers out there all over the place, who dabble. My guess is things in your life that you struggle with are things you have dabbled in and things you excel at are things you immersed yourself in. That’s just how it works.
If you want to learn how to make it rain, you’ve got to immerse yourself in the concepts of people who are making it rain. So number two what I told my friend. I said, “There’s two books you’ve got to read.” And I shipped them out to him. First book is Expert Secrets. In this business there’s two sides of the business, there’s the art and the science. The art really is the selling and messaging and positioning, all those kind of things. Storytelling and that kind of thing, that’s the art. So I said, “Read the Expert Secrets book first because that’s the art. Second read the DotCom Secrets book, because that’s the science. It’s the art and the science to making it rain.”
When you read both those books, there’s two different perspectives that you’ll feel in the books. One is very much like the structure, the science, the Dotcom Secrets, the science to how the game is played and the Expert Secrets is the art. A lot of people think they have to master all of this, and you don’t. Especially if you are someone who would love to be an entrepreneur, but for whatever reason you’re not able to. You want to be an intrapreneur in a company. Go into a company and be an intrapreneur for a company. Look at that and say, “I don’t need to know all this stuff. But I gotta understand it all. I need to understand the art and science and figure out where my skill set fits into that.”
So my friend that’s doing video stuff, you have a skill set that in the right hands is worth a lot of money. In the wrong hands its worth 25 grand a year. If you find a company that’s growing, the right company, the right person to plug into and come and say, “I want to make it rain for you.” Brandon Fischer who started doing video stuff for us 2 ½, 3 years ago. He came in and I met him and my brother does video stuff for me, we didn’t really need another video person, but he came to me and was like, “Hey, I want to learn what you’re doing. I’ll do video stuff for free for you.” I was like, alright and he started doing it for free. He did some amazing stuff and started capturing stories for me. He captured Liz Benney’s story of her telling her experience with Inner Circle.
Basically he didn’t come to me as a video guy, he came to me as, “I can capture the story that will make your company look a million times better to make it rain.” So he captured the story of Liz Benney, so we took that video and put it on a website, started driving traffic to it. That Liz Benney video, I couldn’t track it today, but that video has probably made me at least 2 million dollars if not more. That video helped me make it rain. That video asset to me wasn’t worth 25 k a year, it was worth a heck of a lot more. Because it helped me make customers, convert those customers, and get money from those customers.
But he didn’t come to me as “I’m going to be a video guy.” He came to me like, “Let me serve you first.” The best thing about rain makers, if you’re good at what you do, which is why it’s important to be really good at your craft. That is important. Become obsessed, literally become so obsessed with what you do you become the best in the world at it. Or at least the best that person’s ever met. Become obsessed with it. That’s important.
The second thing is figuring out how to use your skill to make it rain and becoming obsessed with that. That’s the missing key. Because then you become an intrapraneur, you come into a company….Don’t come in and try to negotiate a huge fee, because number one if you negotiate a huge fee, the first thing you’re going to do is lock yourself in as a technician. Technicians get paid a salary. As soon as you negotiate you lock yourself in and then you’re there.
If you come in the other way and say, “I’m going to work for free and make it rain and then I just want a piece of what I bring to you.” If you bring it that way and come in and help make it rain, it’s completely different. Jay Abraham, one of the great marketing, strategic minds of all time, his whole thing is he would come to a company and say, “I’m going to come and work for free I just want 20% of the increase.” He’d come to a company and add 40, 50, 60, 100 million dollars to a company and just took 20% of the increase. That’s what rain makers do. That’s what sales people do. You are creating opportunity. You’re creating money for them and taking a percentage of what you create. That’s the key you guys. That’s the key how to be an entrepreneur inside of an organization and have no limit.
Guess who they don’t fire in a company? The person who makes it rain. If you go into a company and you make it rain, that’s it. You write your own paycheck from that point forward. So how do you do that? Number one, immerse yourself in this stuff, in the marketing and sales. Immerse yourself. I would recommend doing it with the podcast. Because I think I’m obsessed with podcasts. It’s the best way to have it ring through your mind all the time. Start at episode one of my podcast, click play and go until you’re done. A lot of you guys, start over.
This is not for my own ego, partially for my own ego, but mostly for you guys. And again, if for some reason I talk to fast or I’m annoying or whatever, I don’t care. Plug into somebody, plug into Grant Cardone, Gary Vaynerchuk, or plug into John Lee Dumas, I don’t care. Whoever you resonate with, plug in and go. Don’t unplug. Every single day, all of your free time, you’re driving, you’re walking, your bathroom breaks, be listening to podcasts constantly. That’s going to give you the immersion, because immersion is the only way for you to get the connections. This connects to this; you’re going to start seeing the big picture.
Number two is you need a strategy and a blueprint. For each of you guys, there’s two books that I’ve written. I’ve put my heart and my soul. I’ve read thousands of books, sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff, to be able to figure out what actually works and put it into a book you could read in a day. So read the Expert Secrets book, number one, and then read the Dotcom Secrets book. Expert Secrets will teach you the art, Dotcom Secrets will teach you the science.
Then you’ve got to look at what your skill set is and where does that plug into the art and science. Again, you don’t have to do everything, but figure out what you are good at. What I would recommend doing, this is kind of the next step, is those who have gone through my certified partner program, we certify people to build sales funnels, the ones that are the most successful, the ones that bit, realize they’re not the best at everything. Henry Kaminski, one of my buddies was in the inner circle for last year, he talked about when he first came in, he was a graphic designer. He’s like, he didn’t say it this way, but similar. He understood the art and the science. “I’m really good at graphic design but I don’t know this other stuff.” So he started studying and learning it. He realized there’s pieces to this.
If you read Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets you will realize there’s pieces and you become an expert in all of it or what he said he did, “I built a voltron team.” Some of you guys, if you’re and you don’t know who Voltron is you can go Google it. Or you might remember Power Rangers, might be a better one for you guys. There are different versions. But Voltron is basically, there were these five, same with Power Rangers, same story, probably the same everything. But there’s five people who had their own super power, they went out there and they were really good. But there was a big bad guy who would always come and they couldn’t defeat him individually. They had to group together and become Voltron and all five pieces came together and they’d fight and they could win.
So Henry said, “I realized I was a good designer, but I’m bad at strategy so I had to find this strategy person to partner with.” So he partnered with his strategy guy, Dave Arsonal. Then he’s like, “I need someone good at selling.” So he partnered with a salesman. He partnered with three or four people and built this Voltron team and he went out there and in less than a year he made a million dollars with his little company.
Because he understood, “We’re rainmakers and I’m good at this piece but I need a couple of people together and we can make it rain. We need someone who can drive traffic, someone to do sales, and I’ll do the art.” He did that.
So for you guys and for my friend, after you understand the art and science, you’ve immersed yourselves, you’re learning all these kind of things, you buy the expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets book, read both of those and understand the art and science of how to make it rain. Now you’re looking back to say, “How do I fit in this? What am I passionate about? Am I good at the story telling part, am I good at funnels?” Figure out those pieces and then you can go to companies and look at that and say, “I’m really good at this piece. I can bring this thing to you.” Or find a partner, find people and come in and say, “We can do this thing.”
A good example of this you guys, I don’t normally share these kind of numbers, but I wanted to just kind of help. Some of you guys have seen the Harmon Brother’s videos, some of you guys know that we are about to launch our Harmon Brother’s video, which I’m really excited for. They did Squatty Potty, Poo-Pourri, Chatbooks, Fiber Fix, a whole bunch of great videos. They make these videos and they’re good, really good. They go viral and they’re amazing.
I wanted to hire them to do a video for me so I messaged them two days after they’d actually messaged me, which is kind of funnel. They had this funnel, the Fiber Fix funnel, they said the video went viral but the funnel isn’t converting and they wanted my help. I was like, “Funny. I just wanted to email you to see if you’d do a video for us.” We got on the phone and tried to talk through it and both of us are rain makers. Our videos make it rain, we know what they’re worth. I was like, “How much does it cost to create a video?” I was thinking maybe $50, 60 grand or whatever. With a very straight face he was like, “We charge $500 thousand up front plus 20% of ads spent.” I was like, “What?!” and he looks at me straight, he didn’t say this in so many words but, in the words of this episode he said, “We know how to make it rain, so that’s what we’re worth and that’s what we charge.” A few months later I wrote them a check and now they’re going to make it rain for us.
Same thing, they came to me with the Fiber Fix funnel, “We want you to fix this funnel, how much does it cost?” I’m like, “you can hire someone fix the funnel it will be 10 grand, but for me it will be a quarter of a million bucks.” And he’s like, “Whoa, why are you so expensive?” and I was like, “Because I know how to make it rain.” So then they did their deal, because it worked.
As I went with the Harmon Brothers and we did the video, it’s been the most amazing experience, I can’t wait to show you the whole behind the scenes video. There’s some on Funnel Hacker TV, you see bits here and there. But it’s amazing, it’s not 2 brothers who do this whole thing. It’s these guys who started a business and then their process is really cool. When we hired them, basically they said, “We’re going to do a writing retreat.” And they found three amzing writers to write three different scripts for us. So we go to this cabin and they have three writers come and read their script. Each script was insanely amazing, but three different comedic scripts.
And these guys again, are writers that they hired, they’re sketch comedy writers. They each wrote three and came back and said, “Which of the three do you like the best?” we picked what we liked the best and then all three guys took those, in this cabin, we went back and all three of them went and took the best script and they took all the jokes, the best jokes, wrote a new script and came back and showed it to us again. It was even more funny. We went back and forth for two days until we had the script.
Then after we had the script, they went and said, “Okay, for this script to happen we have to have props.” So they hired someone to build stages, and they needed videos and hired video people. They hired all these people to make this amazing thing. Last weekend we went and filmed it and hopefully we’re about a little ways away from launching it.
Again, with them, it wasn’t just them. They had built a Voltron team of people that could go and execute to make it rain. You have to start understanding that. Come back to where we started, the hierarchy of business. There’s the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is there and they are obsessed with getting the message out about their thing. Not about the thing, about getting the thing into other people’s hands. That’s why I love entrepreneurs, because they’re tied into this whole marketing thing. Good entrepreneurs are obsessed with the marketing and selling of the thing. They are the ultimate rain maker.
Number two is the technician who do the thing, which are essential to the business, but again you’ve got a cap, you’re a commodity. Understand that there’s a cap and you’re a commodity, but you’re in there. You’re going to have a good, typically secure financial thing, all those kind of things. You get security but you’re not going to have unlimited income.
Then you’ve got the rain makers. So for you guys looking at understanding what a rain maker does and what it is and how the process works. Figuring out how to take your skill, your super power and uncommoditize yourself and make you unique, make yourself rare. Make it so people pay you half a million dollars if you make them a 3 minute video. Is that crazy?
Someone pays me a quarter of a million bucks right now to make them a funnel. For me, not that it takes me that long, I just know what order the pages need to go and what message in each page. I know how to make it rain. I’ve been obsessed with this thing for over a decade.
For you guys, it’s time to become obsessed. Become obsessed in your own company. And if you’re the entrepreneur in your company listening to this, become obsessed. You’ve got to be the lead rain maker. Find the technicians, plug in the right people, and like I always say, find A players, not B players. A players are 32 times more effective than B players. Find A player technicians and pay them well. Because you don’t want to go find other technicians. Plug in the best technicians you can find, then go find rain makers. And if you try to cap rain makers, they will leave you. Understand that. You, as an entrepreneur, find rain makers and give them the ability to have unlimited ceilings in their income. Because if they do that, again, a rain maker is just an entrepreneur who for whatever reason, life circumstances isn’t able to go out on their own to do it, which is totally cool. There’s nothing wrong with that.
If it weren’t for all the intrapreneurs in our business, our company is 99.9% intrapreneurs. If it was not for my intrapreneurs we would not be where we are today. I try to create our businesses in a way where people can grow and have unlimited earning potential. That’s the key.
For you guys listening who, that’s you and you’re stuck in the technician role or you want more, or you’re in this thing where you want to be an entrepreneur but you can’t or whatever. This is where to focus on. Learning how to make it rain and then building a team around you. Finding people, other pieces and networking, not so much finding jobs, networking to find people to help you to be able to make it rain. As soon as you have a team, as soon as you personally or your team can do that, you can go to any business on planet earth and write your own paycheck.
Then it comes down to picking the right businesses, and that’s a whole other lecture for a whole other day. Because I’ve seen some funnel consultants who go and they get paid ten thousand dollars to build a funnel, other guys get a hundred grand, the only difference is who they are pitching to. It’s interesting, I’m privy to share the details, but the Harmon Brother campaigns, if you look at the Purple Mattress, its $1000 mattress. Because every sales makes $1000, it’s been one of their most successful campaigns. Chatbooks has been amazing, probably the most viral video they’ve had, but each sale doesn’t bring in, the value of each customer is a lot less, so it’s harder to continue to make that one rain.
Same thing with all you guys, if the customer or the client that you’re working for, if they’re average customer value is $30, if you’re working for a restaurant, making $30 it’s not good. But if you’re working for a customer where each customer is worth 25 thousand dollars, it’s a lot easier to justify what you want to charge people. Stuff like that.
Alright, well it’s late. It’s almost 1:00. I gotta get my 6 hours to go to the water park. I’m going to end today’s podcast, but I hope that helps you look at how business works and understanding that for you to be successful and make money, you have to understand how to make money. You gotta learn how to make money. Don’t just learn your skill because if you do that you’ll become a technician, which is fine if that’s where you’re happy. But if you really want financial freedom and wealth and no limits and no ceiling, you want to be able to grow, it comes down to studying money and understanding how it works and understanding the marketing and the sales, getting people in the door and getting their money from them. It’s the most valuable part of any business. I don’t care what the hoity-toity doctors tell you. I don’t care what all the people in school and colleges, it’s the most dignified, most important role in business.
If it wasn’t for it, business would stop. The economy would stop. So it’s figuring out how to plug in your skill set into that piece of business. Because that’s where the money’s made. When you’re part of people making the money it gives you the ability to have percentage of that. So I hope that helps. So for my friend who’s listening and everyone else listening, once again, immersion. Get the blueprint. Figure out what your unique abilities and talents can plug into that blueprint to make it rain for a company. When you do that, you got what you need and a whole bunch more.
So I hope that helps you guys. I hope that helps my buddy. I won’t say your name because, you know. I appreciate you and hope to hang out with you someday again. Everybody else, have a good night, talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.