Behind the scenes of what I’m currently doing to simplify and sexify my messages.
On this episode Russell talks about how much time he spends simplifying his presentations so that even his kids could understand his concepts. Here are some of the other things to listen for in this episode:
So listen here to find out why Russell thinks its so important to simplify and sexify your message.
---Transcript---
Hey what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets Podcast. It’s Saturday and I’m getting ready for the big Funnel Hacking Live Event.
Hey everyone, just wanted to jump on, I know that this last week and next week I’ve been working so much on presentations and slides and getting ready for Funnel Hacking Live, I haven’t done many podcasts and I just wanted to kind of communicate and connect with everybody because I’ve been thinking about you a lot. There’s just so much stuff happening.
Anyway, there’s a lot that goes into events. The venue, the people, the speakers, there’s so much stuff, the organization, the schedule, the timing, everything. So for the last six months or so we’ve been spending time doing everything else, and now it’s like, it was two weeks away last week, now we’re 10 days away as of right now. So for me it was like, okay it’s the last two weeks, it’s all about I need to get my presentations done.
And it’s interesting, most, I don’t know, it’s weird. Most people who do their own events nowadays, they don’t speak very much at their own events, which is weird to me, it doesn’t quite make sense. But that’s what people do. A couple of ones I went to this year, and they were great events, nothing against that, it’s just the promoter didn’t speak as much.
I went to Ryan Rand’s event, which was really neat, and I asked him, “Are you nervous? What are you speaking about?” and he’s like, “I don’t speak at my own presentations.” I was like, “Oh you don’t?” He’s like, “Yeah, at my event I like to bring people in and then I let them speak.” I was like, oh that’s interesting.
Then I was at Grant Cardone’s event and he came and didn’t speak hardly at all either and I was like, I would die….If I had a stage like Grant Cardone’s I would have been on stage like 20 hours a day every single day, just leveraging that because that’s such an important thing, you know what I mean?
And then if you look at just different ones. For me, I feel like.. I know that when Traffic Conversion, when it first came out I used to go because I loved hearing Ryan and Perry speak. Both those guys are geniuses and I loved hearing from them and as Traffic Conversion grew, they started speaking less and less and less. Now I think the last T&C had like 50-60 speakers and they maybe spoke once each. And it was just like, I don’t even, this isn’t worth me going anymore because I wanted to hear from them.
I look at people who’ve got tons of longevity, someone like Tony Robbins. When he does his events he’s on stage for 50 hours in a weekend. I feel like, I don’t know, I always want to be there. I want to be the one inside of it.
So because of that, for this event I’ve got 6 presentations I’m creating. And of course I’m not someone who can just make a, I don’t want to go just off the top of my head. I want to make these impactful and emotional and strong. So every presentation the design I’m spending on each one, that alone is amazing. The last podcast talked about figuring out the hook, the headline, and the framework and I spent a week just doing that on the six presentations. I’m only about half way through all the framework, which is sad because I was trying to get it all done this week so next week I could work on slides.
But as I was doing this, I was trying to think, I’ve been talking to a lot of people on my team, people at the event, a lot of people just trying to figure things out. I think the reason why I’ve been successful, so I’m saying this for people who are creating courses or content or products or events or slides or presentations or anything, because I think it’s a hint and I hope it helps because that’s the whole point of why I wanted to jump on here. I wish you guys knew how much time I spend trying to figure out how to simplify concepts. I think that the biggest thing that keeps people back from success when they’re presenting is techno babble. If you’ve read the Expert Secrets book, I talk about techno babble.
We use these huge vocabularies, and my vocabulary is very simple, it’s very easy. I’m always trying to simplify. If you look at these standing whiteboards here and here, those who are watching. And here and here, and then I’ve got papers all over the ground here. This is me taking a concept and writing it out, writing it out again, and again trying to simplify it so it’s so simple that I could explain it to my kids. So simple I could understand it. And I don’t think people spend the time. If you knew, it’s Saturday night at 6:24 pm, I’m sitting here trying to simplify this one section of a presentation because it needs to be so simple that people understand it.
I think that instead we think that we’re so smart and we use our techno babble and our learning to show how intelligent we are, but all it does is alienate the audience and pushes them away from you. So I think that’s one of my super powers, but it’s not something that’s magical. It’s me sitting here for 10 hours trying to figure out one presentation, how to simplify it and make it simpler and simpler until it’s simple.
For all of you guys out there, I’d spend more time on that. Try to simplify things. Simplify your vocabulary, pull the big words out, pull the complex things out. See if you can explain what you’re doing in a doodle graph. If you can’t then it’s too complex. Some of you guys are like, “Well mines, I couldn’t do mine in a doodle graph.”
No, you could. When I, we did a thing in network marketing program a while ago and they wanted me to do a video explaining the comp plan and it was way over my head anyway. So I had John on my team go through and he watched, I don’t know, 12 plus hours of video of people explaining the comp plan from the lawyers and the marketers and all sorts of stuff. He went through and tried to explain it to me and it took like 4 or 5 hours for him to explain to me. Then I had it all on a whiteboard and I was like okay, how to make this simple? And it took me another 2 or 3 days to simplify it to a point where it’s like, “Oh, that’s really, really easy.”
So I just wanted to, I don’t know, for you guys who are, and this is kind of to the audience who’s presenting and experts and things like that. First off, continue to publish your stuff. That’s one big key I want to put out there. Don’t, I don’t know, your longevity of you as a person, as a personality, has to do with how much time you put out there. Now, a tangent on that, I’m very strategic. At my events I spend a lot of time on people coming there. I don’t speak at many other people’s events anymore because I want, I also don’t want to be the guy who’s at every event speaking, because you lose your supply and demand type thing there.
But my own event, I want to be the one there. I want to make it so this is a venue people come to and they’re going to come because “I’m going to hear six whole new presentations from Russell that I’ve never heard before, that he’s never talked about on the podcast.” It’s this unique thing and I want to give that experience to people.
And so, I think for your own things, do that kind of stuff. Be willing to do it. Second is simplify things as much as you can. And then third, I don’t know how to teach this, but try to make things sexy. I could have said, “This presentation is how to get traffic to your website.” Or “How to increase your social media profiling.” Or whatever. But instead we made it sexy. I read these headlines to you guys during the last event. Like, “Conversation Domination. How to get your dream clients addictively binge watching you on every platform that they live on. Warning, this aggressive approach is only for those who truly believe in their message.”
You look at that and you’re like, okay that’s a cool headline Russell. But we sat here for like 3 hours going back and trying to make it easier. So for you, you’ve got to put the time in to simplify your message and make it sexy and figure out the hook. Spend time doing that.
I wish you guys could all get a glimpse at how much time I spend on that part of it, because I don’t think people understand that. They just put something together and go out there. And it’s like, no, that’s the valuable part. That’s what makes you valuable to your audience, your ability to go through and collect information, ideas and things like that. I did a podcast before how your job is to think for a lot of other people. You’re doing that and then bringing it back to somebody in a simple format and they’re like, ‘Oh, cool. I could actually do that.”
So that’s what your job is to do. You’re curating all this stuff and then bringing it back in the most simple form possible to give to people. But you’ve got to spend the time doing that. You have put in the energy, the effort to think through those things for them, simplify them and give them in a way that they can do it.
I don’t know how to teach that other than, I want you guys to be aware of how much time I spend doing it because then you might realize, “Oh I don’t spend any time doing that. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I should spend a Saturday here in my sweats in my office just thinking through how to simplify this for people, because it’s meant the world to me, and I think it’s helped me to build an audience and get followers and people listening to me because I’ve been good at that.
I hope that helps. I don’t know, I’m not the best in the world. I still talk to fast, I mumble, I have all sorts of quirks and things that are strange. I know some people don’t like me at all, which is totally cool. But that’s one thing I’ve been good at and it’s helped a lot of people. I look at my books, Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, they’re not my original ideas, it’s me reading a billion things, trying a bunch of stuff, and then putting it into a format that’s as simple as possible. That’s why I doodle things out. I’m trying to doodle it so you’ll be like, “Oh there’s the doodle, that’s what he’s thinking.”
So for you, it’s figuring out simplify, simplify, simplify. Cut out the techno babble, make things sexy, make things interesting, spend that extra time to do that because it’s worth it. If I can do that for 6 presentations in a 2 week period of time, that’s doing it for all of them, plus then creating slides for all of them on top of everything else I’m doing for this event, I guarantee you can do for one presentation or with your perfect webinar that you’re doing. I’m guessing a lot of times if your webinar’s aren’t converting it’s because you’re too complex. Simplify the story, simplify the process, simplify those things for people so they get it. Make them sexy, make the hooks good, make it intriguing and curiosity driven because those are the keys.
Anyway, that’s it you guys. I’m going to get back to work. I gotta make this thing sexy and simplify it so hopefully sometime today I can go take a nap. Alright appreciate you all, for those coming to Funnel Hacking Live, I cannot wait to see you. It’s going to be amazing and hopefully this event will change your business, but more importantly I want it to change your life. So I’ll see you guys there. Bye everybody.