Update on my “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, as well as a side of marketing that we never get a chance to talk about.
On this episode Russell talks about serving your customers at the highest level when times are good, so they will continue to be your customers when times are down. Here are some of the other cool things you’ll hear in today’s episode:
So listen here to see why you should always be serving at the highest level possible, despite if times are good or bad.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk about something you probably don’t consider marketing yet it really, actually is.
Alright everybody, I hope you’re doing awesome. This whole last weekend for me was amazing. I got nominated to be entrepreneur of the year, here in this region of the country, and I had a chance to go down to Utah with my family and my kids, spend time with my parents and I had a great time. Then I went to the actual ceremony and we won. Woo hoo. We’re entrepreneur of the year in the tech category, and now I’ve qualified to go on to nationals, which will happen in November, and if I win that, then I get to go to the world’s. And then maybe there’s like a universe? I don’t know where it ends at that point, or where it goes, but it’s pretty awesome.
Anyway, now I’m back in Boise after a long 5 hour drive yesterday, getting back home. I had a chance to go back to my old high school, which was really cool. I had nostalgia, I went back to my old wrestling room, which my high school they’re actually tearing it down. So this is my 20 year reunion this year, and they’re tearing it down, which means it will be gone. The room, the wrestling room that I grew up in, that I trained in, that I practiced in every single day that literal blood, sweat and tears for 5 years of my life was in that room. And it’s sad to see it go down, but it was cool to be able to bring my kids there once before it’s done.
It just reminded me of that piece of my life and how much effort and hard work and everything had to go into for a goal. And it’s funny because wrestling is not like other sports. At my high school people liked basketball. So the basketball was upstairs and there was a lot of people playing basketball and having fun. They get to drink and eat food whenever you want. If you know anything about wrestling we don’t get to do that most of the time.
People actually show up to the matches, or to the games for basketball, which doesn’t happen for wrestling. And wrestling we were down underneath the basketball court in this little, tiny room that we called the rubber room. It smelled like rubber and sweat and kind of disgusting, I love it though. Not going to lie. And we were doing it not because we thought we were going to get people to show up and cheer us on, it was like, it had to be an internal thing. I have to do this because I want this thing, this goal.
I think a lot of times it’s very true, the same things are true in entrepreneurship. I say all the time, in fact, I said it at the award ceremony for the entrepreneur of the year, I said that entrepreneurship is the loneliest job in the world. And wrestling is similar. There’s not fans coming out. The girls don’t line up at the wrestling matches to cheer you on. It’s not that way, you do wrestling because you love wrestling. And I think entrepreneurship is the same way.
You do entrepreneurship because you love being an entrepreneur, because you love serving people, you love changing their lives. That’s the thing, the reason, the motivation of why you do it. I think it’s a big reason why here at Clickfunnels do the Two Comma Club and all these things, it’s because I want to award the entrepreneur who is killing themselves in an effort to try to change their own lives and then afterwards change the lives of their customers.
And because it goes so unnoticed and unknown, I want to be the one to bring that up. So that’s why we do most of the crazy stuff we do here. Because I know what it’s like to kill yourself in pursuit of a worthy cause and not have anyone notice, except for yourself. So it’s kind of a nice thing to do.
So the entrepreneur of the year award was fun for me, because it was like a time for people to, I try to recognize other entrepreneurs all the time, and it’s fun to have a chance to be recognized. Anyway, it just kind of reminded me back of wrestling, the same kind of thing.
In fact, I remember my dad and I were talking about this. At high school I was a state champ. I went to nationals, took second place in the nation, I was an all American, the highest level I think any athlete at my high school probably ever got to, and we get back and at the end of the year they award the athlete of the year for our school, and guess who got it? Some girl who didn’t do anything. Nothing wrong with the girl, I love that. But she had placed on a state winning team from our high school, and because she was the captain she got it. I was just like, are you kidding me? It just blows my mind.
Anyway, sometimes entrepreneurship, as is wrestling, a loveless job, but it’s amazing. Anyway, I thought it was really cool and just wanted to kind of share that with you guys.
Now one quick thing I want to share with you guys today, because I was talking about this with a couple of people over the weekend. It’s interesting right now we are in the middle of an economic boom here in the United States of America. I think real estate prices are the highest they’ve ever been. Right now, there’s tons of building and construction. But I remember back in, sorry the UPS guy is asking me if it’s okay if he parks behind me. Oh people.
Anyway, I remember in 2008 when the economy crashed and afterwards from like 2008 until like, I don’t know the next 5 or 6 years because the economy was down, it was, I remember we hired people to come work on our houses, and the actual owner of the company would show up and be like, “Yeah, there’s not much work left. So here I am.” And he’d be doing the work. And it was cool because they were hungry and they worked hard because of all these kind of things.
They showed up every day and made sure they had good quality and all sorts of stuff and I liked that a lot. And now as the economy is booming, these companies grow and they forget about the hard times. They hire all these people on and it’s insane. You look at the quality of what’s happening in the construction industry, especially here in Boise. I’m sure it’s the same everywhere. It’s horrible, they don’t care anymore because there’s so many businesses and so many jobs they’re just running and burning and churning and making insane amounts of money.
What they don’t understand is that things cycle, there’s the ups and downs. It happens to every business. It’s going to happen to my business again, it happens for all of us. So for them it’s like, they don’t understand that they’re up right now, but it’s going to come back down. And it’s like, the marketing they need to be doing right now is continuing to serve at a really, really high level when things are good. Because when it turns back around, guess who we’re going to remember? We remember people who served at a high level.
The people that are doing that, that are serving and not just burning and churning and cash dumping, they will get the jobs when things get tough. We had somebody that we paid to come do two big projects at our office and also a project in my home.
And up front I was like, “The most important thing is communication. You guys have good communication?” And it was insane how bad the communication was. I’m not going to go into it because….anyway, a bunch of bad things happened and right now it’s a year later and my floors are still warped because of them not communicating with me or with the people doing the hardwood floors and all these things.
And right now we’re about to start a project that’s going to be, I don’t know a 5 or 6 million dollar build project. And it’s like, they’re not getting that project because they’re like, “Things are so busy and we have so much stuff happening.” I was like, I don’t care how busy things are. This is my project, do you want to be more busy? This is what’s going to happen. I know your industry. I’ve seen the cycle. It’s going to crash, this whole thing is going to come down and guess what? You’re going to be broke and homeless and looking for a job, and guess who’s job you’re not getting? Mine, because you didn’t serve me at the highest level, when you didn’t have to.
So I just wanted to kind of say that, because it’s something that I don’t know, you guys are all going to experience. You’re going to struggle, you’re going to be amazing, you’re going to serve people at the highest level you’re able to, then you’ll start getting successful, you’ll start having the fruits of your labor will come, your company will start growing and then you’ve got this option where you can continue to try to do your best or be like, you know what, this person….just kind of a burn and churn model. Where it doesn’t matter, there’s more business, more work than I could ever do.
I just want to remind you that that cycle always come back. Be a good person, always try to serve at your highest level, all the time, not just when times are tough. And if you do that, when times are tough they won’t be tough.
Anyway, I hope you guys feel that from me and from our company. We are always trying to serve at our highest level, all the time. Even though right now, times are really, really good for us. The reason why they’re really good is because we continue to do that, we’re continuing to over deliver on every single aspect, every single step, everything we’re doing.
I know that by doing that, that’s what is going to keep us around, hopefully forever. And hopefully when the downtimes hit, you guys will remember that and you’ll stay with us because you’re like, “man, they served us when things were good, and they’re going to continue to serve us when times are down. And this is where we’re putting the eggs in this basket.”
So think about that for your company as well because I promise you guys, it’s all cyclable, it all goes up and it all goes down and it all goes up, and it all goes down. And if you are amazing when things are up, you’ll also be amazing when things are down. Alright, I’m out of here, I’m going to work on some fun stuff. Appreciate you guys, have an amazing day and I will talk to you guys all again soon.