A quick play-by-play of the last 24 hours of my crazy life.
On this episode Russell talks about the last 24 hours of his life and the events that made it feel crazy. Here are some of the interesting things you will hear in this episode:
So listen here to see why Russell’s last 24 hours have been such a stressful roller-coaster ride.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Tonight is going to be a late night reflections episode.
Alright, I don’t know if that’s really a thing, a reflection episode, but it has been, the last 24 hours of my life have been insane. I learned some really good lessons along the way. I just wanted to sit here and talk it out with you guys if you don’t mind. Hopefully you’ll get something out of it.
So some of the back story, we are in November, for those who are watching or listening to this later, it’s almost Thanksgiving; it’s about a week away. It’s been interesting, working on a lot of really neat, amazing projects and some things that I feel are part of, I don’t know, it sounds cliché but part of my mission in this life. It’s not building, it is indirectly building funnels, but it’s for who we’re building them for, what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish with it. Things that are really, really good in life.
And what’s interesting, I know that everyone listening has got different beliefs, but what’s interesting is whenever you try to do something good, the adversary, call it whatever you want, fights against it. And I was starting this project with this group we believe in and start moving down this path, I was warned by a lot of people who were in this project saying, “As you start trying to move forward towards this thing, the adversary, or whatever you want to call it, is going to fight against you.” I was like, okay bring it on.
And it’s crazy because I’m starting to see, maybe not, maybe it’s just my mind, but as we’re moving towards this thing, I’m just noticing a lot of stuff happening. So the last 24 hours were crazy. So right now, I think it’s 11 at night. I just got my kids to bed. About 26 hours ago, a little longer than a day, 24 or 25 hours, whatever it was, a little over a day ago, I had just gone to bed as well. It was just a normal night, I was going to be staying up late working because my wife had just left to Disneyland yesterday, she’s out with her girly friends doing Disneyland. So I was like, I’ll have some time to work, catch up on some projects.
I was going to start on them, and by the time I got the kids down and was about to come and start working, I got a text message from Melanie saying, “Hey, this weird thing is happening.” It’s kind of cool, someone from my inner circle saw something where basically lawsuits were being filed against us. They’d seen it ahead of time. We got spies everywhere around the world. Anyway, so we looked at it and it was kind of a violation. Basically it was somebody had gotten, we found out later, it’s been 24 hours. But it was a text message that they’d gotten that they said that they didn’t want to receive from us.
So instead of just being a normal human being and being like, “Oh, I don’t want to receive this text message.” this person is filing this huge lawsuit against us. It’s crazy. So we got the name and number and all sorts of stuff and it’s crazy. Somebody signed up for Clickfunnels with a fake credit card, it wasn’t even a real credit card, logged in twice and never logged in again, their credit card failed. So our system, when your credit card fails, actually when you log into Clickfunnels, there’s a little thing saying, “Hey, if your credit card failed, would you like us to text you? If so what number?” So you put in the number.
So the credit card failed, so we texted saying, “Hey, we don’t want your websites to go down, you should login to your Clickfunnels account, add your credit card so you don’t lose your websites. It sent him two text messages, this was like 2 or 3 months ago. So this person, it’s insane, gets these text messages and files a lawsuit against us. A lawsuit, for crying out loud. For irreparable damages and on and on. It’s just nuts, nuts.
So it’s funny because I always heard about frivolous lawsuits and it’s just like, I always thought those were like, I couldn’t fathom that those were a real thing, that human beings were like that. But it’s just like, I just saw it, I’m seeing it right now. I’m like, holy crap. It’s funny because, it’s interesting, when you don’t have money you’re like, “Oh, if I just had money all my problems would go away.” I got bad news for you guys. Problems don’t go away, they just turn into different problems, more annoying problems, where literally people are shooting at you and attacking you all the time. It’s nuts.
So I get that message about that, so we’re trying to just research and figure that out. I can’t think about this, I got too much stuff to do. So I kind of put it on the back burner, sat down at the computer right there, my work computer where the Expert Secrets book was written. Sit down at the work computer, check my email, and there’s two emails. First email was from this organization we’re working with to try do a lot of good in the world and save a lot of kids lives, this thing that we’re moving forward on, do the ultimate good. Then the email that came in literally a minute before or after that one was from this other person.
I’m not going to tell the back story behind this because it’s not important. But it’s a person I dealt with three years ago. This huge email, I haven’t heard from him in over a year, huge email talking about, going on and on about how they’re going to sue me for all these crazy things. I’m just like, I can’t even, I don’t know how to handle this right now. It was just crazy.
I did my best to get a handle on it, but I gotta get this out of my mind because I gotta get some stuff done. So I was up until about 2 last night working, passed out, the kids were up this morning at like 6, so I got four hours of sleep last. Got up, got the kids ready because my wife’s gone. Luckily we have help, a nanny who comes and helps get the kids out the door and everything with school. And then, head in to the office, have a ton of stuff going on, obviously, we’re trying to coordinate so much stuff. I wish I could, just let you have a glimpse of all the stuff we’re doing at once. I don’t think people would believe it. There’s a lot happening, obviously. It happens when you’re trying to change the world.
It’s fun, we did a podcast with Nathan Latka, the top, if you’ve ever heard his podcast, it’s really, really good. I did a podcast 18 months ago with him, and we did another one to follow up with him now. We’re 5x of where we were at 18 months ago, which is insane. It was really cool recapping all the positive growth that we’re doing. It was cool, when the questions he asked at the end, he’s like, “Most business owners reinvest their profits back in their company, that’s where they get the highest return on investment. Where do you invest your money Russell?”
And I laughed, “You know, we reinvest money back in the company, but for me, I didn’t start a business to reinvest money back in the company.” He’s like, “So wait, real estate? Where are you reinvesting your money?” I’m like “I’m not reinvesting in anything. I reinvest it in my kids, my family. Right now we have an acre and a half, two acre lot next to our house that was just full of weeds, so this summer we knocked down all the weeds and put in a full Astroturf baseball/soccer field. We put in 9 underground trampolines, a volleyball court, a baseball field, a full basketball court and a track that wraps the whole thing. I’m investing my money back in my kids. I want to spend weekends and night with my kids playing games. That’s why I got in the business. The cash flow is nice, but that’s what I’m reinvesting my profits back into, you know.”
It was kind of just a fun answer because I’m sure most people on a business podcast don’t think that way, they think about whatever business, real business people think about. Anyway, so that was kind of fun and stuff.
But I had to deal with the issues. So we had to deal with this dude who got two text messages after he told us to text him and he didn’t update his credit card. And I started realizing, after we started learning all about the do not call list, and the do not text list, it’s just crazy. Basically we brought on all these lawyers and companies and all this crap in the last, all day today, which is crazy. But we found out, it’s interesting, these texts, there’s 150,000 known people, if they get a text message from you they will file lawsuits. That’s all they do.
So as soon as they get a text once, they get blocked across all these things. So it’s like we’re tapping on API’s, so we pull out all these known complainers and stuff, but it’s insane. So all these guys do is go out there and sign up for things and wait for you to text them. That’s it. This is a real thing. You hear about this, I always thought there’s no way that people are that evil. But they are, this is a real thing. It’s happening, it’s happening to me right now. So now we gotta fight this thing, it’s just nuts. Time, energy and money wasted for some moron who’s going out and looking for lawsuits. That’s it, it’s crazy.
So there was number one, then I deal with number two. Some of our lawyers came in and the lawyer basically, this deal from three years ago and I haven’t heard from him in over a year, the lawyer is just shocked. I can’t believe we’re hearing from him, it’s just insane. And sat down with me and went through everything again. “You guys are in the right. 100% in the right. My authority as your lawyer is we need to go and just destroy this person and put him out of his misery.” He said it nicer than that, but not much.
But I was just like, we’re in the meeting and everything and I think it was Dave or Brent, or someone on my team asked me, “What does your gut tell you, Russell?” and I was like, “My gut tells me I just need to do whatever it takes to make this go away.” I listen to my gut a lot, because I don’t think it’s my gut, it’s other stuff.
Anyway, I told my lawyer that, and it’s funny because I had this really rare chance to learn something today, something I teach my kids all the time. My kids, we get in these arguments with each other, especially my 7 year old and my 12 year old. They’ll get in these arguments about things and the older one is so mad because they’re trying to prove that they’re right to the younger one. I’m like, “It doesn’t matter, just stop. It doesn’t matter that you’re right or wrong, just stop fighting, please. Just stop fighting.” “But he’s wrong.” “It doesn’t matter, it does not matter who’s right and who’s wrong. It does not matter at all.”
And I try to teach that to my kids over and over again, just walk away, let it go. It does not matter. It’s funny because after we got done with the lawyer meeting and stuff and I wrote this person back and just said, “Hey, here’s the lawyer, you can figure all this stuff out.” And that person wrote back and said, “Please get on a call.” And I was like, I don’t want to get on this call. I just don’t. I don’t want to get this call.
So for me, I kneeled down and I prayed and I was just like, “What should I do.” Asking for help because I knew that I wanted to be like my 12 year old and be like, “No, you’re freaking wrong.” And yell at this person, but I knew that wouldn’t solve anything and just hurt everything. So I prayed for humility and prayed to know what to do and how to do it. I got all this frustration and anger so I picked up the phone and called this person.
I listened to the person, who basically starts yelling at me, telling me all these things that he thinks I’ve done wrong. At every point I just want to fight back and be like, “This is not true, that is not true. I’ve proved that’s not true.” And everything. But I sat there and bit my tongue. I was just praying in my head, “Let me know what to do, how to handle this and what to do.” Just sitting there and sitting there, taking it and taking it and finally just, “Dude, what do you want? What’s the real story, just tell me.” And we talked about it and I think we figured out a way to solve it. And it sucks because like my little kids…legally, people get justice with lawyers, justice needs to be served, you were in the right here, this is not your fault.
And I’m looking at this from another angle, saying, there’s two laws, there’s justice and there’s mercy, these two things. Legally, we always want justice for everything. There’s the other side of mercy. I don’t know about you, but there’s things in my life where I make mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. Made way too many mistakes to brag about, especially on a public form like this.
But there’s times in my life when I needed mercy from people and from things. There’s times when mercy came through to me and it saved me and helped me. In my physical life and spiritual life, in different things like that, and I’m just grateful for the times when I was extended mercy. And I think for me at the time, you don’t have to have perfect justice, extend mercy here and it’ll make everything better. I don’t know if that’s always the case, but definitely was the case for me today.
So that was the first two issues. And then, I’m all excited for my kids wrestling match tonight. This all happened by 3 today, then I had to leave to go the wrestling match. So I go to the wrestling match, we get there and I’m working with my kids because last week they kind of got beat up a little bit at the tournaments. So all weekend long I worked with them in the wrestling room at our house and got them better and better and better.
I got there and my first, Dallin my oldest of my twins was first match, he wrestled the perfect match, it was so awesome. All the stuff we worked on this weekend he was doing, it was really neat, really special to see that. He won and it was just so exciting.
And then Bowen had the next match, but it wasn’t until the end of the night. So he’s warming up and goofing off and having fun and Dallin is doing the same thing and then Brandii, who is our nanny, she brought all of our kids, and luckily this turned out to be a huge blessing. She brought the kids to the wrestling match, which was kind of stressful because I’m with Norah, holding little baby Norah and the other ones are running around and all sorts of crazy stuff.
And then Bowen is getting closer to warming up, so I gave all the kids back to Brandii and went to the other side of the mat and start getting Bowen all warmed up and then Dallin is there goofing around because he’s between his match, having fun and he goes over to the bleachers, the side of the bleachers and he saw someone jumping up doing box jumps on this ledge. There’s like a metal strip across this ledge, and he sees them doing box jumps and he’s like, “I’m going to do it.” Because he’s kind of bored, sitting around. So he goes to jump and do a box jump and misses it, hits right below his knee. I’ll actually show you guys this.
Those of you who are watching, this is like, parental discretion advised, this is kind of freaky. But if you’re listening you can’t see them, but he hits his leg and is like, “Ooh, that hurt but I’m fine.” But I look at him and I’m like, “Dude, you are not fine.” It was the deepest cut I have ever seen in my life. You can see this here, that’s his knee. It looks like you can see the bone. If you’re listening you can’t see this. I want to throw up just looking, it’s like the deepest cut ever. I looked down and I was just like, “Oh my gosh. You can see all the way to the bone with this cut. It is huge.”
And then there’s blood pouring everywhere, all over the mats, all over the thing. I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” I’m just going to keep showing pictures while I’m doing this. I’m like, I don’t know what to do or even how to handle this. This is….So I’m kind of pulling him out of the wrestling room, and trying to warm up Bowen on the side of the mat, now I’m pulling Dallin out and there’s blood just oozing everywhere. My wife’s not there, I don’t know what to do, there’s no one, I don’t know what to do.
I come out in the hallway, and luckily the wrestling coach, he’s got some kind of medical background, I’m not sure exactly, he was there. I’m like, “I need help.” He’s like, “Oh my gosh. Yes, put him down.” So he puts him down, here’s some more pictures. Luckily, because I was kind of in shock I didn’t know what to do, so he goes and gets someone to go grab some gauze and they wrap the knee up. I was like, “We gotta take him to the ER, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to miss Bowen’s match. Bowen’s been training.” Ugh, look how deep that is.
So anyway, the coach is there and helps me wrap this thing up and then I ran over to Brandii, our nanny, who is over there….Here’s my little buddy, laying in the hospital bed, smiling during the surgery. There’s him all stitched up at the end there. Anyway, he’s laying there, and I grab Brandii, who is our nanny and said, “Dallin just cut his leg open and he’s gotta go to the ER.” So she grabs all the kids and comes back and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” Bowen’s trying to warm up and he’s all frazzled because of that.
So me and the coach pick up Dallin and run him out to the car, which is like at least half a mile. We get in the car and Brandii loads up all of our kids plus her kids and heads back to the ER. I run back in and I’m trying to…oh, I don’t have our medical cards on me, of course, because that’s how I roll. So I’m trying to find medical stuff to send with him and Bowen’s warming up for his match and he’s all frazzled because he saw his brother bleeding to death, he’s sure his brother’s going to die, his twin brother’s about to die.
So then I’m trying to keep him focused, get him warmed up, and he goes out there and wrestles, and poor little dude. He’s trying so hard, and he’s so much better, but he got thrown in the first 10 seconds and pinned. And he comes off just crying his eyes out and I think he’s more upset about his brother, but just all the emotions of that, they’re just little dudes right now.
But oh, it was emotional. I was trying to find Dallin’s backpack is in some bleachers, and then Bowen, getting all out the door and then racing over to my car and speeding off to get to the hospital. But I remember when we were leaving all the kids were like, “We’re starving, we’re starving.” At the wrestling match. I’m like, my kids haven’t eaten yet. It’s like 6:00, 6:30 at night. I’m racing to the hospital and I run off to a fast food restaurant, this is a crazy story, I’m sorry. I got no one to talk to, my wife’s gone tonight, so hopefully you guys don’t mind.
So I race to the fast food restaurant and I order food, I’m going through the drive thru and I’m like, “I need ten hamburgers, ten drinks and a kids meal because I got a little baby daughter.” So they pull me through and the lady’s like, “Hey, the manager wants to see if you want ten custard ice cream things.” I’m like, “You know what, yes. That’d be awesome.” So we had this car full of hamburgers, ice cream and water for me and Bowen. We’re racing back to the ER, we get there and we find Brandii with all the kids and I give her the keys and I’m like, “go feed the kids in the car.” And then I run in and Dallin’s in there and he’s about to start surgery to get his knee all cleaned up. Poor little dude.
The cut was so big and they had to get a needle to numb, they probably shot him, I would say conservatively probably about 30 different shots, he’s just screaming, he was so tough. They stitched him all up and it was just forever. Brandii took the kids home, they went home and did homework, and got them all to bed, they did homework until almost 11 and went to bed. That’s been the last 24 hours of my life.
So it’s been crazy. I just wanted to tell you guys that, it was a fun story. Just some of the things, some of the lessons of today I learned. Number one, whenever you are moving towards things that are good, the adversary or whatever you want to call it, is going to fight against you. That’s okay, it’s normal, it’s going to happen. I know a lot of listeners are people who believe in God, who think about God and if you’re not, I just recommend remembering there’s a reason why these things happen. I believe it’s to get us to remember God. So first off, remember God.
Number two, there are evil people in this world, frivolous people who are just out there to steal money. And they’re there, and the bigger you get, the bigger of a target you’ll become. So just be aware of people and protect yourself in any ways you can. We’re trying to put up a whole new line of defenses for us, so know that.
Number three, know that sometimes, if you want to have mercy, if you want people to have mercy on you sometimes in life, don’t always fight for justice in every situation. Be okay letting somebody else, just be okay giving somebody else mercy sometimes. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. Even if it’s not, even if it doesn’t give you justice. It may hurt, it may suck, but if you ever want to receive mercy in your life, it’s worth it to give to other people. It’s important.
The last one, I don’t know what the moral of the story of the last one is, other than it was just a lot of stuff. That’s about it. Anyway, I hope that helps you guys, I hope you learned something, I hope you got something. If not, don’t worry about it. If you did, though, please share this video or this podcast with somebody you love and care about. I appreciate you listening, it’s a huge honor to have you guys listening to this stuff that we share and I hope that it helps. That’s all I got for tonight. Thanks you guys, appreciate you all, have an amazing night, we’ll see you guys all again tomorrow. Bye.