Episodes
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As youâre planning your year this year, make sure to spend time focusing on this important aspect as well.
On this episode Russell talks about having an end of year goal meeting with his partners and what it means to fortify yourself against your weaknesses. Here are some of the amazing and insightful things to listen for in todayâs episode:
Find out why Russell started off the end of the year meeting with Clickfunnels partners asking what the things are that could take down Clickfunnels. How Russell has learned from some weaknesses his former businesses have had and how he is fortifying himself against them with Clickfunnels. Why you should fortify yourself in all aspects of your life, including business, your marriage, your relationships, etc.So listen here to find out why itâs so important to look for your own weak spots and to fortify your business against them.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today weâre going to be talking about fortifying your weaknesses so your company can continue to grow long term.
Hey everyone, I hope everythingâs amazing. We are getting ready for the holidays, in fact, this episode will probably go live during Christmas, maybe even on Christmas, I donât even know.
But last week we had our big partner meeting where all our partners fly out to Boise and we lock ourselves in a room for two days and we discuss the plans and the future and world domination, and what weâre going to do, and trying to figure out the whole process. And whatâs crazy is our goal for the last year, last year when we did this, our goal was like, we want to do a hundred million dollars in sales, in the calendar year. Because weâd done it in like 3 years or something, it took us to get to a hundred million. And weâre like, we want to do a hundred million in a calendar year. So that was the big goal.
And actually, whatâs crazy, as of yesterday when Iâm recording this podcast, we did it. We broke a hundred million dollars in one calendar year, which is crazy. Insane, so thank you for all your support, everybody whoâs invested in programs, uses the software, who loves what we do, we are grateful for you guys and for making it happen.
Now next year itâs like, whatâs the next goal, whatâs the next phase? So we had the big meeting, got everyone out here and it was a lot of fun. We basically, like I said, lock ourselves in a room and we just have a big list of items we go through and then we try to prioritize and schedule and figure things out. Itâs just kind of a cool thing we do every single year.
But I wanted to share with you guys how I started the meeting this year, because itâs different than normal. So basically, we started the meeting and I brought everyone together and said, âOkay, weâve done some amazing things this year, we have some big goals for next year, but before we get into any of that, I want to talk about all the ways that Clickfunnels could fail.â And everyoneâs like, âoh, thatâs a depressing way to start the meeting.â
Iâm like, âNot in a depressing way, but if weâre not aware of where our chokepoints, where we could actually get tapped out, if weâre not aware of what our weaknesses are, then itâs almost like, a lot of people, we donât want to look at those things, so we kind of hold a blind eye.â And not just in business, but in everything, in life. Like where are my weaknesses in my marriage, and in my family relationships, with my kids, where are the weaknesses?
We typically, our brains donât like to think about the unpleasantness of things, so we kind of block those things and we donât talk about them or donât think about them, as opposed to the opposite, which is like being aware of them, acknowledging them and then fortifying yourself around those things so that the problems donât happen. So thatâs what we kind of talked about.
So in every business thereâs things that can make your business crash. I know because I have crashed multiple businesses in the past. And hopefully Iâve learned each time and Iâve tried to fortify things stronger the next time. For example, last time I had my big business crash, some of you guys may have heard this story before, it was actually right about the time I started this podcast. But we had a hundred and something employees and we had all our merchant accounts, I think we had 14 merchant accounts, but they were all with the same processer, the same bank.
So I thought we had diversity because they were different merchant accounts, but apparently because theyâre all with the same bank, the bank looks at them as one merchant account, even though thereâs like 14 of them. So when that bank decided they didnât like us anymore, they shut down the merchant account, but that shut down all of our merchant accounts, lost 14 of them.
And we had this huge business, it was growing, everything was doing amazing, but that one thing, that chokehold was able to like really quickly, someone just pinched that and the whole company basically went under. I had to let go 80 people in a weekend and it was horrible and it was all because of that one thing.
So I started thinking, what are the things inside Clickfunnels, that if they were to go wrong, could destroy this amazing thing that we built? So one of them again, is merchant accounts. Are we diversified? Do we have backups? If Stripe shut us down what would we do? What would be the process? What are other things we can ensure that we donât? What are our chargeback rates? What are our refund rates, whatâs high, whatâs low, where do we need to be? Just figuring out all those things because the last thing in the world I want to happen is lose my merchant account and then I lose Clickfunnels, right. And then everybody who weâve been serving, now we screw them over because they lose that piece. These are the things that keep me up at night, by the way. So that was the first one.
Then we talked about what happens if the FCC doesnât like how we sold something? Oh my gosh, that could be another chokepoint. If the FCC came in and said, âWe donât like how you sell your stuff.â We could be shut down. So weâre like, what do we do?
So itâs like, letâs go and hire an FCC lawyer to go through every single page of every single funnel and give us feedback and weâll make changes to the copy. Letâs look at our webinar presentation, things that arenât compliant, letâs change those things. Letâs look at all sorts of things, join the BBB, joiningâŠ.thereâs another organization weâre trying to join. Whatever we can do to protect ourselves from anything bad like that happening. Make sure that we are squeaky clean in all aspects there.
And then weâre like, what happens if our servers go down? What happens ifâŠ.weâre looking at all the possible things that could go wrong and then instead of trying to turn a blind eye to them and not think about them, we try to face them straight on and be like, hereâs the weaknesses. What do we need to do? How do we fortify? What are all the things we can do to protect ourselves and protect our customers and the people weâre serving? Itâs those things.
So I share with you guys because, first off, so youâre aware Iâm doing everything in my power to continue a solid foundation for all you guys. I want to make sure you have a place to build your businesses on and your legacy on and we want to make sure weâre here for a thousand years. So hopefully that gives you guys some comfort there.
But second off, I think you guys should all be looking at your businesses as well. If you only have one merchant account, thatâs scary. If you only have one traffic source, thatâs scary. If all your ads come from Facebook, what happens if Zuckerberg decides to change how ads work? Or everythingâs coming from Google, what if the algorithm changes again? Just being super aware.
What if I have a business partnership I donât like? What if my partner and I donât get along? What could happen there? What happens ifâŠ.all the what ifâs and looking at those things and figuring out how do we fortify against this?
The same thing could be true in your marriage. What are the points where something bad could happen in your marriage, what are those things? Be aware of those things, and how do we fortify against that?
When Collette and I first got married and first started this business and started hiring people, one of the very first things that we kind of sat down and said is, âOkay, Iâm not going to go to lunch with a single female.â Thatâs just something that I will never do. And thatâs just a stronghold. Even if itâs someone Iâm not attracted to, or someone way different, itâs just a rule. I donât go to lunch by myself with a female. You just donât do it, because who knows what could happen or what people could think could happen or whatever. It doesnât even matter, itâs just Iâm fortifying myself against potential problems.
So we set up these fortifications ahead of time and then you wonât have the issues. So now that weâre in this season of planning and preparing and figuring things out, I just challenge you guys to look at your weaknesses and fortify yourselves around them.
You know, if I was to go to war against another country, Iâd be looking at the same thing. Where are weak at? Are we weak on land? On sea? Where are they strong at? Where are we weak at? How do we fortify ourselves so that when the attacks come there, weâre prepared for them and we can withstand the blows.
Anyway, there you go you guys, thereâs the lesson for today. Itâs not going to be the most fun conversation, but I promise you itâs a lot more fun than the conversation you have afterwards, when your merchant accounts get shut down, or when Zuckerberg shuts down your traffic, or when the FCC finds your funnels not compliant, or whenâŠ..whatever your thing might be.
And so I just want to encourage all you guys to do what we did and really look at those weaknesses, focus on them, and figure out how to fortify them as youâre making your plans for the upcoming year. Because doubling your company, or tripling your company, or whatever your lofty exciting goals are, which are fun, all that fun disappears quickly if youâre not careful.
So I hope that helps somebody out there. I know itâs a big thing for us this year, as weâre trying to figure out how to go from a hundred million to a billion, which I donât think is a 12 month goal, but I think it is a 10 year goal. How do we make sure weâre fortified so that when we 10x where weâre at now, we can handle it and support it and weâre prepared for it?
Yeah, so I hope that helps you guys. With that said, I appreciate you all. Thanks so much for hanging out on the podcast. If you learned anything or if you enjoyed this, please take a screenshot on your phone, just click the buttons, take a screenshot, go to Istagram, Facebook, wherever youâre social at, post and say your number one thing, your biggest takeaway you got from this episode. Please tag me in it, because I love to see that. And then if you use hashtag Marketing Secrets in the post as well, that would be awesome.
Itâs been fun watching more and more of you guys taking snapshots and posting your big takeaways from the episodes, that means a lot to me and I love it. So please keep doing it, plus it helps other people find out about our podcast, and hopefully I can help serve more people.
With that said, thanks you guys, and weâll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
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A late night story session with Russell, talking about more of his failures that built his foundation.
On this episode Russell looks back on things he did over a decade ago, and why he is bringing some of those things back, even though they were initially failures. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in todayâs episode:
Find out what kinds of things Russell heard were good ideas, which he then tried, but didnât have success with. See why some of those things he considered failures are coming in handy now that he has Clickfunnels. And find out why itâs important to try things, even if you fail at them.So listen here to find out why even when you consider something a failure, it has been a valuable part of your journey.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now Iâm walking up my stairs in my house, about to go to bed, but thereâs just something too cool on my mind that I got to share with you right now.
So I just wanted to share a story that hopefully all you guys will have this same story in ten years from now, or twelve years from now, or fifteen years from now or whatever. But when youâre living it in the moment, itâs kind of annoying, but looking back in hindsight itâs the most amazing gift ever.
So let me tell you what Iâm talking about. So I first joined my first mastermind group over a decade ago now, and at the time I didnât know how to do anything. I had a couple of websites, I had a little email list, I was selling stuff and I joined this mastermind group. It was Bill Glazerâs mastermind group. And I get in this group, and at the time, this is right before the real estate bubble popped like in 2008 or whatever that was. So in the group there were 18 people and nine of the 18 people were real estate coaches, teaching people how to make money in real estate. And then the other nine were all sorts of other weird businesses.
So it was kind of cool, I came into this room and all these people doing amazing things. Iâm sitting there and the first guy gets up and he talks about how he has a call center. I was like, âoh my gosh, I should have a call center.â And then the second guy gets up and heâs like, âOh, I do live events.â And I was like, âOh my gosh, I should do live events.â And the third guy gets up and heâs like, âI do local events.â Iâm like, âI should do local events.â The next guy gets up, âI run radio ads.â Iâm like, âI should be running radio ads.â
And luckily for me at the time, I was super naive and didnât know that I probably shouldnât do all of them at once, so instead Iâm like, âDude, I need to do all of them at once.â So after my first set of meetings I go back home and sure enough I tried to do all those things at once.
For example, one of them was, I remember there was a guy that was doing these local seminars and he would run radio ads and do direct mail and heâd fill these local seminars and people would come locally and come to the seminar and heâd sell something to them. And then from there heâd take them to another event and theyâd have this whole process.
So I got home and without even thinking Iâm like, âWeâre going to run local seminars.â And so we went and booked a Holiday Inn and I went, âHow do we fill this event?â This is pre-facebook, pre-myspace, this is a decade plus ago. And I was like, âI donât know. We could run direct mail.â So I call up some list broker that I found and I was like, âDo you guys have direct mail for people in Boise who want to get rich on the internet?â And theyâre like, âUm, sure. Weâll sell you a list like that.â
So they sold me a list of 5,000 names. And then I was like I gotta send a direct mail piece out. Iâve never written a direct mail piece before, but I just gotta figure it out. So I remember I made this postcard, and because it was in Boise it had a picture of me wrestling at Boise State. So I had a picture of wrestling on this business seminar. It was like, âLearn how a local Boise State Wrestler makes money on the internet. Come to this free event.â
So we had a phone number for people to call to come in and RSVP. Then I was like, âOkay, we got a direct mail piece, but we gotta figure out other ways to fill the event. What should we do?â And weâre like, âWe should do radio ads.â So we call the radio station and Iâm like, âHey, I want to run a radio ad.â And theyâre like, âOkay.â
And I had been learning about copywriting, so I remember I wrote my own little ad and took it to the radio station. And then the host, or whatever they call them, the DJ, whatever itâs called, the person at the radio station who talks on the radio, whoâs going to read the ad, heâs like, âOh this ad is horrible, Iâm just going to freestyle it.â So he wants his own ad. Iâm like, âNo you donât understand. This is how direct response copy works.â And we kind of fought back and forth and we ended up making a hybrid ad that he read that had a call to action form for the live event.
So we run this local live event and we run the direct mail, we run the radio ads and we get, I donât know, a couple hundred people to RSVP, and we set it up like, âOkay, weâre going to do one event in the morning, one in the afternoon and one at night.â So we did that. And I donât know how many hundreds of people that signed up, we only got a few that actually showed up for each event. And then they showed up and we didnât know what to sell. So we tried to sell these really weird things, they didnât really work.
I remember I did three presentations that day, and the first presentation, there was probably like 30 people in the room and it went really well. You know, I had my suit and tie and my shaved head with my glasses on. I did my little thing, and I think I sold a $100 workbook and we sold a few of them. And then the next group came and like 3 people showed up. It was so awkward. I gave the same presentation I had done earlier in 90 minutes. I did it in 25 minutes just because I was nervous and I was talking even faster than Russell normally talks, which is pretty fast. And I donât think I sold any with that group. And then t he third one came and it was a bit bigger and I sold a couple. I think I made like, I donât know, four or five hundred bucks at this little event we ran. And we probably spent five grand, probably more than that, through direct mail and everything.
Anyway, a colossal failure. Iâm like, âI will never do local events again, that was the worst idea ever.â And then somebody else was like, âWell you should do your own big events.â So I was like, âOh, cool. I could do that. I went to an event one time, I should be able to run an event.â So we rented a hotel room and started trying to fill an event and it was harder than I thought it was going to be.
But luckily I met a partner, Stu McLaren, Stu and I did two or three events together, which is awesome because he had actually run some events. I think the first event we ran, people showed up and weâre just like, âAlright sit down.â We had no idea what to do. When we started running them with Stu, Stu was like, âWe need to get nametags for people.â Iâm like, âOh, thatâs a great idea.â Heâs like, âYou need to register people.â And weâre like, âOh yeah, we didnât even think about that.â
They had a process to make these events. So we had two or three events with Stu where we had, I remember weâd go to like Walmart and buy a hundred dollar printer, and weâd print off a hundred name tags, and then at the end of the event weâd raffle off the printer. Like âThe first person who does whatever, weâll give you a free printer.â A printer we had bought because we didnât want to pack it up and ship it back to our houses.
Anyway, we did three or four of these little events with Stu and made a little money and learned a lot of good lessons there. And I remember the last event I did was this one in Salt Lake, and it was the back of, we had a product called the Twelve Month Millionaire and it was an interview that I did with Vince James where he had made a hundred million dollars in 23 months, and it was a six hour interview I did with him, so we sold that product. And on the backside, we gave everyone who bought a ticket to this live event where we were going to teach online, offline fusion marketing. You know, how do you use offline tactics with online.
I was so excited for this event and I think we had 3 or 400 people who had RSVPâd saying they were coming to the event. I think we sold like 9000 copies of that product, which was amazing. But 300 put the, I think it was a $100 deposit down to say you were coming to the event.
So we had this event, and we thought we had 300 people coming to it, so we built out the whole thing. And then we, itâs so embarrassing, we get to the event and less than 100 people showed up to it. So this huge room is completely empty. We had no stage, there was this little ghetto projector. So we did the event and we ended up makingâŠwe sold something at the event and ended up making a little bit of money, but not a lot. And that was the time when I was like, âI will never in my life do live events again.â
That was it. We would never do it again. I told my team, âWeâll never do it again.â And then fast forward a little while after that, we like, someone told me we should build a call center. So weâre like, âWeâre going to build a call center.â So as Russell does, instead of thinking, I just went and found somebody who knew how to do a call center, we hired them, hired more people, built out a team, got some cubicles, got some phones, started selling leads, started selling stuff and it started working and then we started growing.
The next thing I knew, I woke up one day and we had 80 sales people in the world and Iâm like, âWhat in the world is happening? What am I doing?â And if youâve heard some of my stories about that whole crash and how it fell down, but we figured out, I learned that model imperfectly.
Man so many more. We did free plus shipping offers with forced continuity that we learned and made money with. Then we got shut down because of the forced continuity. We did so many things like that. And at the time I went through the process, I learned the lesson and then I was like, âIâll never do this again because it was horrible and painful and it didnât work.â
But now itâs crazy, a decade later, and Iâm looking at Clickfunnels as weâre growing it now and Iâm like, âHow do we grow this?â and Iâm going back in time to a decade ago and Iâm like, âRemember when we did those live events locally that didnât work because I didnât understand the model and I didnât understand what I was selling, didnât have the right offer? Those would work now. If we made a couple little tweaks that model would work.â
So right now weâre working on building out a local model. Weâre filling up local events and sending speakers to these events. Funnel Hacking Live. We launched Clickfunnels and I swore weâd never do events again and people were like, âWe need an event. We need an event.â And Iâm like, âNo, Iâll never do an event again.â And finally we agreed and we did Funnel Hacking Live number one, which had 600 people, and number two had 1200, number three had 1300, number four had 3000, this year weâre going to have 5000, and we have probably one of the biggest marketing events in the world now, by far the best. Iâm not saying that because Iâm biased, it literally is the best. If youâre not coming, youâre insane.
Anyway, that came on the back of this thing I had tested years ago and it failed, but I learned the pieces and process and I learned enough of the skills to know when I needed it to dust it off and bring it back out and this time do it right.
The call center, we built this huge call center up and shut it down, and then when Clickfunnels came out I swore, we will never do a call center. Weâre never gonna do a call center. Weâre not going to build out a sales team. And sure enough, guess what Iâm doing right now. Weâre building out a sales team. We have a front end sales team calling new leads. We got a back end sales team selling migration packages and things and weâre building that out again, right now. And again, itâs something that I swore Iâd never do again, but itâs something I learned, cut my teeth on, and now weâre doing it correctly. Weâre doing it right. Weâre doing it in a way that will continue to grow the company.
And thereâs more. These are just two or three different things, the top of my head, that weâre doing now that I had tested a decade ago, now weâre finally doing.
So Iâm sharing with you guys because Iâm guessing, if youâre all like me youâve tested and tried a lot of things and some of them havenât worked. And at the time, you probably were like I was and been like, âLocal seminars are a scam, I would never do this. This is the worst business ever. Whoever told me to do that was a moron.â But the context, the situation wasnât right yet. But now I have that skill that weâre bringing back.
So for you guys, the same thing. I know that youâre trying things, youâre testing things. Some things arenât working, but I promise you, thereâs a reason why youâre learning it. And just because the first funnel or the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or tenth offer doesnât work, itâs okay because youâre learning how to make offers.
Iâm working on a presentation, Iâm speaking at Garret Whiteâs Warrior Week, next week. And one of the sections Iâm talking about Hook, Story, Offer and talking about how you need to make offers and whoever makes the most offers in the marketplace traditionally wins. And then Iâm going to actually show all the offers I created from the beginning of time until Clickfunnels. A lot of people think, âOh thereâs probably ten offers or a dozen offers or a couple dozen.â But there are over a hundred offers I made before I made the Clickfunnels offer. Over a hundred.
These werenât just like things I threw out quickly on a Facebook live, itâs like a hundred full blown funnels with headlines, sales video, product, creation, all those things. Over a hundred different offers I created before we created the Clickfunnels offer.
Okay, so itâs all those things, just a consistency of doing it and doing it and doing it. Because you have no idea which one of those skills you learn in this process, youâre going to come back and later use to scale your empire, to serve more people, to get your message out to the market.
The same thing happened in network marketing. I canât tell you how many times I tried network marketing, had ups and downs and pros and cons. Itâs funny because last week David Frye, heâs one of my favorite people Iâve ever met, he posted this thing like, âIf I was still doing network marketing this is exactly what Iâd do.â
And he mapped out this whole strategy of how heâd run these local events and how heâd film and how heâd do it and how heâd build the whole thing up and I was just like, âOh my gosh.â There were three or four ideas and Iâm like, âI remember when we did local events for network marketing. We literally ran our own local events for that. What are we doing, why did we do it, and how did it work? What are the things we learned that we can bring back and plug back into our thing?â
In fact, I remember one time, we were doing send out cards and we had this idea where weâre like, âWhat if we put an ad in Craigs list, looking for people who run home parties and pay them 100 (maybe it was 300, I canât remember) It was the same cost as it was to be a distributer, but paid them to come and consult us on how to run a home party for this new company we were trying to roll out.
This was like the greatest idea ever, it didnât work. Well, it kind of worked. Anyway, we put ads on Craigâs list and we had like, I donât know, 20 people who were home party experts. They had run home parties for different companies and they agreed to come and train us in a group for a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars, whatever it actually was.
So we sat down and we showed them the product and then they were supposed to kind of write out a home party and script and process and show it to us. So they had to try the product, test it out, and like use it. And then when it was done we had each person come one on one into a room back with me, andâŠ.Iâm so proud of myself for trying this. And weâre like, âWhat do you think about the product?â theyâre like, âOh itâs amazing.â I said, âOkay, well we owe you three hundred dollars to do this thing orâŠâ I think it was the 100 dollars, ââŠthe hundred dollars for your time, or Iâll pay you $300 to cover your distributer fee at send out cards. Which would you rather do?â
And a couple of people were like, âI just want $100.â And like half of them were like, âpay the $300. I will become a distributer. You sold me on the product. Iâm now sold on it.â And then our thought was like, âOh my gosh, we have these people now, they know how to do home parties, they signed up for our company, maybe theyâre going to go and do home parties.â And a couple of them did, it never grew really big. But conceptually it was brilliant I think. It might have been the worst idea ever.
But it was something we just tried right. And thereâs so many things we tested over and over again trying to figure out what was going to stick. Anyway, I just hope this gives you guys encouragement for those who are trying things that arenât working. Theyâre not working as effectively as you wanted. âMan, I thought for sure this webinar Russell told me was going to be the best in the world. Then I tested the webinar, it didnât work.â
And youâre all angry but itâs like, maybe itâs just because itâs the wrong offer. Maybe you gotta make another offer. Change your offer, or try a different product or try a different venue. Maybe instead of doing a webinar, maybe itâs a tele-seminar. Maybe itâs a live event, maybe itâs local. Who knows? But the skill sets youâre learning each of these steps along the way is going to help you for the next piece and the next thing. So donât discount the education youâre getting from each of your failures.
So thatâs the message for today. Iâm going to go to bed. I gotta get up tomorrow morning at 5, because Iâm working on the Traffic Secrets book, so I got a couple of hours of sleep and then back up at it. So Iâm going to bounce. I appreciate you guys, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode please take a screenshot of it, post it on Facebook, Instagram, anywhere else you like to be social. Tag me on it, do hashtag marketing secrets, I always love seeing those and making sure you guys are actually listening. Thanks so much for everything guys, and weâll talk to you soon.
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Episodes manquant?
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If you donât want your successful business to die, heed this warning now.
On todayâs episode Russell sends out a warning of why you can never stop fueling your fire. Here is some of the insightful advice in this episode:
Find out how Russell learned to always fuel the fire even when he wasnât ready to sell his customers something. See what kinds of things you can be doing to keep yourself relevant in the eyes of your customers. And find out why even when youâre successful with a huge following you need to continually put fuel on the fire.So listen here to find out some of the ways Russell fuels his fire, despite having millions of followers between all the platforms.
---Transcript---
Hey, good morning everybody. This is Russell and I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, it is a crazy rainy day out here. Our weather here in Boise is rainy. It wants to snow, itâs getting close to Christmas, but itâs too warm. Itâs been raining like crazy, weâve been praying it gets cold so we can get some snow, because thatâd be really fun right now.
Anyway, Iâm heading to the office and just had a recurring theme in my head for the last day or so and I was like, I need to share this with everybody. So Iâm going to talk about first my own experience, and then a close friendâs experience, and then some of you guys, itâs going to be related back to you.
So the theme, the message today is you gotta keep on putting fuel into the fire. Now, Iâve experienced this about three or four times throughout my career, Iâve made this mistake and learned from it. And hopefully I wonât make this mistake again.
But a lot of times what happens is we start having success with something right, weâre like, âThis is amazing.â And then you stop doing it, for some reason. So in our business for example, weâll start growing a list, weâre doing something to get new customers, new people in our door. And weâre having fun with it and itâs working. And all the sudden we start building a list, then we start, we shift our focus from that to selling them stuff and doing things and all these things. And we forget about the fuel that was brining people into our business.
And at first you donât notice it because youâre having so much success with the existing customers you brought in, but eventually it starts imploding and your company will eventually die. Iâve seen so many people who get into my world and they hear me talk about, âYou need to do a podcast a week, every single week, for at least a year.â So they do it for like a month, a month and a half, and they start making some sales, and they stop doing the webinar, because theyâre like, âWeâre making money, things are great. Letâs cut off the fuel thatâs building our company.â
Thatâs what happens and logically youâre like, âI would never do that.â But how many of you guys are still doing your weekly webinars? Alright, that means you cut off the fuel to your business.
Alright, let me step back to like a decade ago when I was building my company. I remember one point for sure, I was having some success, I was making some money, things were working, and I was like, âThis is amazing, amazing.â And started hiring the company, started building a team, had a bunch of people, had an office. And then I had this idea for this website that was going to be the greatest thing in the world. So we started working on it and it took us about six months to build that website.
I remember during the process I was like, âOkay, I donât want to email my list other things. I donât want to make them upset, I donât want to freak them out. I want them to be ready so when I have this thing ready and launched and live, theyâll be ready to buy it.â
So for like six months I didnât email my list, and then the new thing came out and I was so excited and we emailed the list. The list would normally get three or four thousand clicks if I send an email to them. I remember I had like 300 opens and like 12 clicks. And I was like, âOh crap, they donât remember who I am. I am screwed, Iâm in such a bad spot right now because I need money very, very badly, which is the reason why I did this whole promotion.â And they forgot who I was. I hadnât been putting fuel into the fire.
And it was a very sad, scary lesson. I had to fire a bunch of people, I laid off some staff and I had to scramble to rebuild my list, rebuild a connection with them, get new people. I remember in my head saying, âI will never not email my list because people forget so fast.â If I waited a week to email my list, if it takes me three weeks to email my list, 2/3rds of my list will have forgotten who I am by that point.
Thereâs so much noise, so much things happening, you have to always be out there. Thatâs the reason why Iâm doing Instagramâs every day, and Facebookâs every day, and podcasts every day, and all these things every single day because we need to keep fueling the fire. Fueling the fire is what builds the empire.
So I had a friend over last night and we were talking and heâs going through a bit of a tough time now, and we start talking and it was funny because heâs got a couple of different businesses and in all of them he had stopped putting the fuel. For his local business he had stopped the fuel. He just restarted it and he was like, âItâs killing. Weâre doing awesome again.â And I was like, âYeah, but whatâs the lesson?â and heâs like, âIâd forgotten to put fuel on the fire.â Iâm like, âyeah, you gotta keep doing that.â Even when things get successful, you gotta keep doing the things that are bringing fuel to the fire.
And then that same person has a webinar, and he was doing a weekly webinar for a long time, making a bunch of money and then he stopped because he started selling other events and things like that to this list, and it worked for a while and then attrition started happening and atrophy, or whatever you want to call it. And then it slowed down. I said, âStart doing the weekly webinar. Get back with it. Thatâs the fuel that builds the business, that keeps doing it.â
That same friend has a podcast and heâs like, âI used to podcast a couple of times a week and I havenât podcasted since June.â Itâs like, you gotta keep fueling the fire, you gotta keep fueling the fire, even when you have success over here, you canât stop fueling the fire.
So thatâs just kind of the message for you guys today. This is a very short one, I know. Partially because Funnel Friday starts in like 5 minutes and I gotta run in there and get it all set up. So Iâm a little late.
But I just wanted you guys to think through that because you guys are going to go through these cycles of like, youâre focusing on how do I make it rain, how do I fuel the fire, how do I bring people in here, and youâre doing that and doing that and all the sudden your list and your customer base will start growing. And then whatâs going to happen, Iâm warning you, for those who havenât done it yet, and Iâm reminding you for those who have. Youâre going to shift your focus, and you should, you should be shifting some portion of your focus to that audience and serving them and whatâs the next thing I need and how else can I, what can I do? Is it an event? Or whatever, but the big thing is you canât stop. You still have to tie in, I have to keep fueling the fire. I have to keep fueling the fire.
In our company we now have John Parkes on my team, who literally, his entire job is adding fuel to the fire. Heâs running the traffic side of things. Heâs always doing things. And for me, Iâm content. I keep creating podcasts. I gotta do at least two podcasts a week. I gotta do at least this many emails a week. I gotta do at leastâŠwe have these metrics we have to keep doing.
We have to keep running the webinar. We have to get at least a thousand people a week to register for the webinar, we have to keep doing this to have all these numbers that we just keep doing because we know thatâs the fuel for the business.
I could easily stop right now, I could stop doing all this stuff. People are like, âWhy are you still on Instagram? Why are you still on Facebook?â I could stop all those things, but I know what would happen in six months to a year from now, if I stop those things today. I canât tell you how many friends I have who have been in this industry as long or longer than me who were killing it at one time. They had built up this huge following of people and then they stopped and they kept messaging this following. And the problem with that is itâs either constantly growing or shrinking.
So if you stop bringing new fuel in the fire, new people in front end, your existing list, while they might be hot and responsive now, it will continue to get worse and worse until eventually youâre out of business.
So this is the warning to you all. Continually put fuel on the fire. Initially when you start your business itâs going to be a hundred percent of your effort, because you have no fuel, no people, nothing to sell, no one to sell to. So itâs focusing, focusing, focusing a hundred percent of the time. And as customers start coming, you start shrinking it and shrinking it.
But I would say, I would spend at least 50% of all your time fueling the fire and the other 50% on serving the people you have in there. But I wouldnât drop below that. Because if you do, it will start to shrink and shrink and eventually disappear, which is the worst thing for all of us.
Alright, thereâs your word of warning. Fuel your fire, keep it going. Do not stop even when it seems like, âI donât need to do this anymore because I got this big following and people love me.â Look at me and say, âWow, Russellâs got over a million people between all the platforms.â I think weâve got a million and a half on the email list, weâve got 700,000 on Facebook, 200,000 on Instagram, all these different places, yet you keep fueling the fire, fueling the fire, because I know I will become irrelevant if I stop.
Alright guys,Iâm getting a message from Melanie saying, âWhere are you? Funnel Friday starts in two minutes!â I gotta go, appreciate you all, donât forget to fuel your fire continually, consistently. If you do that your business will live a long happy, joyful life. Thanks everybody, talk to you soon.
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You may be doing something thatâs holding yourself, and the person youâre trying to serve, back.
On todayâs special Thanksgiving day episode Russell talks about why itâs okay for people you are coaching to seek out coaches that can help them with things that you cannot. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear from Russell on Thanksgiving.
How Russellâs niece seeking a new gymnastic coach relates to marketing coaches. Why as a coach you should allow your students to seek help from others who might be more helpful with certain aspects that you are not. And finally, why seeking significance can actually hinder your ability to achieve it. And only after you make the switch to service and contribution are you able to achieve significance.So listen here to find out why you should always be looking to help your clients, even if that means they need to go to someone else for guidance.
---Transcript---
Whatâs up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to a very special episode of The Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everybody, today was Thanksgiving and I literally, itâs 10:15 at night and I just dropped my twin boys off at my brotherâs house. And whatâs crazy is when Iâm done recording this podcast, I will then email it to my brother, he will then edit it and somehow magically get it on iTunes, and then his wife, Rochelle will then take it and transcribe it and put the transcript up there for you as well, and sheâll post the transcripts on Marketingsecrets.com, and they do that every single episode for you guys. So Iâm grateful for them on this amazing Thanksgiving.
So yeah, so I thought I would just share that so you guys know how the process works. People always ask me, âhow do you podcast?â and the answer is I donât know. I literally get my phone out, click record and start sharing whatâs on my mind. And I have something thatâs on my mind today, I actually had so many things.
And part of me wanted to do an episode where I wrote down everything Iâm thankful for, and I just havenât done that yet because thereâs a lot of things and I was going to go over them with you guys. Maybe Iâll still do that, I donât know. And I had other things that I want to talk about, but thereâs one message that just came pretty loud tonight and I thought it would be fun to share it with you guys.
And the reason why it kind of came to my mind was I was taking my kids back from the hotel, weâre in Utah right now, my parents live here. So we had Thanksgiving with my parents, and now weâre staying in a hotel close to their house. And we had all the kids over to the hotel swimming, and having fun and I was driving them back, driving some of my kids to my parents house, some of them to my brotherâs house, just dropping kids off at cousinâs houses everywhere and I was driving one of my cousins, and sheâs a gymnast, sheâs an amazing gymnast.
And itâs funny because she worked out at gym for most of her whole career, and then she kind of hit a sticking point where she wasnât getting further than she wanted to get. And she couldnât get past that sticking point and some of her friends had gone to this other gym and they got some really good coaching, they had a really good coaching staff there. The coaches there had helped them get past these plateaus and it really helped.
She went back to her coach and she was like, âHey, I want to go to this other gym to help me get past these plateaus so I can continue to progress.â And whatâs crazy, and this is where the lesson is going to come from, for all of you guys. But whatâs crazy is the coach, instead of being like, âYeah, I care about you as an athlete, you should.â The coach took that personal and started yelling at her and screaming, and kicked her out, and kicked her little sister out, and kicked everyone out of the gym because she wanted to get help from other coaches. Itâs crazy to me.
Sorry, the moral, the good part of the story is sheâs gone to this other gym and all of her numbers and all of her things have gone up because this new coaching staff is able to help her.
And itâs funny, the other day on Facebook somebody posted something and they tagged me on it. They were talking about who your favorite marketer is, and they said, âSorry Russell, unfortunately my favorite marketer now is Steven Larsen.â And they tagged me to apologize to me, and I thought it was so funny.
And I remember I messaged back to that person, I was like, âMy only goal in this whole game is to get my clients, my students, my people, whatever you want to call them, a result. Thatâs it.â I donât care how you get the result right. I think thereâs a lot of times when we get stuck in the ego of ourselves and get so worried about, they must have success through my program or the way that I do things. And itâs like, no, no, no. If you actually care about your student, if you actually care about their well-being, if you actually want them to succeed, youâre not going to sit back and only go through your path.
And I posted it and I was like, âThatâs amazing. I donât care if you get it through meor through steven. Stevenâs amazing. Heâs got gifts, heâs got talents, heâs got abilities that I donât have. And if you can get the result youâre looking for through him, Iâm more pumped than you are.â I honestly just want to serve at this point in my life. I donât care. And if someone else can serve better than me to a certain person or certain audience, thatâs amazing. Let them. Thatâs why I bring amazing people to Funnel Hacking Live, people who can out teach me on certain topics because I just want people to get the result. Thatâs all that matters to me. And I think thatâs how good coaches should be.
I remember growing up, I had a really, really good high school coach named Steve Bowdren and Iâm super grateful to this day for him, for a couple of reasons. One, he was an amazing coach. But number two, he never cared if I went and got coaching from other places. During the off season I did freestyle at a freestyle club and had coaches there. And then I did Greco at places, I went to other high schools, other places. And he was always okay because he didnât, he wasnât tied into his ego of, âI must be Russellâs coach. I must be the only person that instills knowledge into his head.â He was like, âNo, Russell wants to be the best. So Iâm going to allow him to be the best.â
So he allowed me to go out there and be coached by tons of other people. So for that, if nothing else, outside of the fact that he was an amazing coach as well, but his willingness to do that is rare. We have so much ego tied into this thing, of itâs gotta be us, itâs gotta be us. And I Just wanted to share that because I see that happening a lot in the coaching world. Weâre all coaching people in different aspects of their life, or helping with health or weight loss or fitness or finance or whatever it is you do. All the different products or services, but sometimes we get too caught up in that piece of it, that you want to be the one thatâs instilling all the information and knowledge to your person and I think that thatâs a tragedy because none of us are amazing at everything right.
Itâs interesting, we had Bart Miller, who is a close friend, heâs the guy who makes me look good at all of our events, gets me all dressed. I pay him a bunch of money to take me shopping to look, not in my t-shirt and jeans, like I would have showed up to my events. And Bart has got a successful ecommerce business as well, heâs in my inner circle, pays me to be in my inner circle, stuff like that.
And he asked me, âHey, Iâm thinking about getting some help with the ecommerce side of my business, what do you think I should do?â and I was like, âOh if I was you, Iâd hire Ezra Firestone.â And he was like, âReally?â Iâm like, âOh, totally.â And heâs like, âWell, okay.â And then heâs like, âCan you introduce me to Ezra?â and Iâm like, âHeck yeah man, Ezraâs the man.â
So I introduced him to Ezra. Iâm like, âEzra, Bart. Bart, Ezra. You guys should work together, I want 10% of everything you make in the future. Just kidding, go do your thing, have some fun, everyone blow up their businesses.â So they went off on that thing and Bart told me later, he said that Ezra was so confused like, âI donât why Russell told you to sign up for my coaching. Youâre his student. Why would he recommend me.â And stuff like that. Because for me, I donât care. I donât care how people get results, I just want people to get results.
Iâve seen, Iâve had people who are close to me inside my business who are like, because if you look at the Two Comma Club X coaching, I brought in a lot of coaches this year. I brought in Julie Stoian, I brought in Alex Charfin, Steven Larsen, all these amazing coaching, John Parkes, James Friell, people who are legitimately amazing at what they do.
And itâs funny because a lot of people have come to the program and gone through it, and I know a lot of people have signed up for Alex Charfinâs high end coaching after my program, after theyâve gone through a lot of our stuff. And theyâve gone through to Alexâs stuff. Theyâre introduced to him through my program and then they buy his stuff later. And I have people who are like, âYou know Alex is just taking people from your program and signing up.â And theyâre like freaking out.
And I have to stop them and be like, âLook, look, look. I donât care how they get the result. I just want them to get the result. If they get that through us, that is a huge honor and Iâm grateful and glad we can be a little piece of their journey. But if Alex can serve them at this level or this piece of their business different than I can, then why not? I donât have one coach, I have tons of coaches.
Itâs funny, Iâve heard people that Iâve got coaching with before tell other people like, âRussell Brunson learned everything that he learned from me.â And I smile because I learned a lot from them, and Iâm grateful for them, and I donât usually say stuff. But Iâm like, man, I have tons of coaches. And itâs like every coach has something theyâre amazing at. I have some gifts and abilities, thereâs things that I can do inside a business that are really, really good.
And Iâm proud of what I can do and itâs a piece Iâm really, really good at. But thereâs other pieces of the business that Iâm not good at, that I donâtâ want to be good at. I donât even want to. People ask me those questions and Iâm like, âYou should hire someone whoâs focus is on that.â And theyâre like, âBut I pay you to coach me.â And Iâm like, âYou pay me to coach you on this piece that Iâm the man at, but someone else is the man at that piece.â Or âSomeone else is the woman at that piece and you should find the right people to coach you and mentor you along the way.â
The reason why I went on this whole rant, is because I just wanted to share with you guys is, donât think that your client is your client. Thatâs the biggest problem that we have, and then we get in this scarcity mindset, like, âOh itâs my person and if they read anybody elseâs books or listen to anything else, theyâre going to leave me.â If they leave you, thatâs okay. Your job is not to protect them. Your job is to give them your piece, the thing that youâre good at, give them that piece.
So people come to me and I give them pieces that Iâm really good at and I plug that thing in and I keep trying to develop my piece and get better at it, and share more of it. And I want to keep developing myself as a human, but I am not offended when somebody goes and gets coaching from somebody else. In fact, Iâm grateful for it because that piece is going to get them closer and closer to their end result.
So stop thinking of your customer as your customer and realize that this is a human who is in the market that Iâm in and theyâre trying to get a result and I feel like my thing is the best and Iâm going to serve them at the highest level that I can, but sometimes serving them at the highest level possible is to allow them to get coaching from different people at the same time.
I look at my amazing cousin, I guess sheâs my niece. I look at her and sheâs an amazing gymnast. And if that coach would have been like, âYeah, you should get some help from that coach and this coach.â Instead of destroying this relationship with her and her family, instead it could have been this amazing thing where he opens up the door to say, âI know this person and this person. Hereâs my rolodex. Hereâs other people you could bring into your world that could help you with this piece and this piece.â And they could have all grown together.
And then guess whatâs fascinating? This is the coolest thing. That original coach, the coach that opened up the door and allowed her to go to other places, would have been the one who got all the credit. Thatâs whatâs interesting to me, I look at a lot of people who Iâve helped in business and then go off to other coaches and get other pieces in other places, and Iâm so grateful for this, most of the time they come back and give me credit. âRussell helped me to grow my business.â âRussell gave me this piece. But I got this piece from this coach, and this piece from this coach.â But because I was the one who helped them and served them selflessly and allowed them to go and learn from other people, for whatever reason the credit still comes back to you.
Itâs crazy because that coach, my nieces coach wants the significance, so because of that heâs trying to hold this in and keep the significance. And because of that he lost his significance. Whereas when you open it up and allow, and try to serve people at your best and donât be offended if they come or they go and just do your thing, thatâs when you get the significance youâre actually seeking for.
Itâs been funny, Dave Woodward and I have had this conversation four or five times in the last two or three weeks, itâs kind of crazy. About this fascination of like these people I know who at one time in their life were very significant. They had the significance from what they do and then as time has gone by theyâve become less relevant and theyâve lost their significance.
So they try and they fight and they cling, trying to get significance, and they do it in this way where they feel like theyâre going to feel more significant because of this, and all these things theyâre trying to do. And the reality is the more they do it, the more it distances themselves from people and the more they lose their significance.
And I look at me, there was a time in my career where I was very significance driven as well and I was seeking after it and trying to get the recognition. I wanted to be on stage and I wanted people cheering my name and all this kind of stuff, and I was fighting for it, tooth and nail and it was hard to get. And I got some of it, which is why I kept, you get that and that fuel that drives you on for a while.
But I remember a couple of years into this business I got over it. I was like, thatâs not as cool as I thought it was going to be. I was like, Iâm not going to worry about significance anymore. And I remember it was a mental shift for me. I was like, Iâm stop thinking about me and start thinking about my customer. And for me, that was when I started really transitioning from, âHow do I serve Russellâs ego?â to âHow do I serve my customer?â and it was this weird shift and I stopped seeking for significance and started seeking as a servant. How can I serve? How can I impact? How can I contribute to other people? And thatâs what my shift became.
And then the most fascinating thing happened. When I made that shift mentally, I get more significance now than I can handle. Today was Thanksgiving. I probably conservatively would say that between email, text, Voxer, Instagram, Facebook, those are the platforms I see directly on my phone. Between those channels, Iâd say conservatively today there was well over a hundred something people thanking me for what I do. So many I canât even respond. I feel guilty, I canât even respond back to all of them or I would have missed my whole family on Thanksgiving.
And then I open up Facebook and I canât open up Facebook without seeing like 10 people talking about CLickfunnels and what weâre doing. I go to events and I get asked to do these huge events now and all this craziness that Iâm not seeking for, it comes to me now. When I stopped seeking significance I got more significance than I can even handle. So much that I just want to hide sometimes, and I donât know how to get rid of it, because it just keeps coming. But I canât stop serving because I get addicted to that.
And I just want to tell these people who are seeking after significance, when you stop seeking significance and you start serving, youâll get more significance than youâll ever dream of. And it doesnât seem right, it seems backwards and doesnât make any logical sense, but itâs happened for me.
And the people in my herd, in my tribe, in my influence, who Iâm able to communicate with, who listened to that and they believe it and they shift, they find the same thing. And itâs fascinating.
Most entrepreneurs, so if youâre in this spot donât feel bad. Most of us get in this business because we want significance, weâve a chip on our shoulder. Somebody said something bad about us, somebody didnât believe in us, we were the dumb kid in school. Thereâs all these reasons so we get in this business because weâve got a chip on our shoulder and want significance. And then we start fighting for it and start fighting for it. And initially itâs okay, itâs what gives us that initial drive and motivation that we need to get off or butts and change something.
But the problem is that some people get the hit of significance and they keep going after it like a drug. And they go for the next hit and the next hit and then next hit. And itâs, I donât know, itâs weird. But you canât, itâs hard to get that direction. You get little hits of it and it goes away, hit and it goes away, hit and it goes away. Itâs almost like itâs face, itâs like a hollow significance. I donât know.
But when you make that shift to service, contribution the significance will come, almost more than you can handle. Itâs almost like, itâs tough now sometimes. I love it, Iâm not going to lie, it feels amazing. But itâs interesting.
So for you, if youâre listening to this, look at the spectrum, are you seeking significance? And if so, donât feel bad. Itâs okay, itâs how all of us got here. But the fastest way to get that significance, is actually not seeking after it. Itâs not by positioning and posturing yourself, itâs not by all those things. Itâs by finding your people and serving them. And sometimes serving them means letting them go.
Sometimes it means helping them find other coaches, sometimes it means being okay if somebody else helps them with something. What is best for the person youâre serving? That should be the thought in your head constantly. What is the best for this person Iâm trying to serve? What is the best for them? Not whatâs the best for you, whatâs the best for them? And if you think about that, it will change everything.
Anyway, I hope that helps. Iâm back at the hotel, Iâm now going to finish this podcast. When I finish it, what Iâll do, Iâm going to save the title and Iâll end it. Iâll email it to my brother, and in a week or two it will be live on iTunes. And like I said, his beautiful wife will transcribe it and sheâll post it on Marketing Secrets-the blog, on marketingsecrets.com, and thatâs kind of how this whole podcast thing works. Itâs a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoyed tonight and I hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving, no matter where youâre at around the world. Just remember that shifting from significance to contribution will change your life and it will change the lives of the people you have the opportunity to serve.
Alright with that said, appreciate you all. Iâm getting messages from my wife and my brother and my sister all asking where I am at, so I better go in and see whatâs up. Talk to you guys all soon. Bye everybody.
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All of us have a unique ability that seems impossible to clone, but what if you could clone it? Let me show you what Iâm doing.
On todayâs episode Russell talks about how he is attempting to clone himself, and how that is going to give him more freedom. Here are some of the outstanding insights in this episode:
Find out why Russell is finally building out his speaker team, after a year since the idea originally surfaced. Russell asks the question how you would clone yourself to get more freedom, while still scaling your company. And see how many speakers it will take to replace Russell, and why he should have done this from the beginning of Clickfunnels.So listen here to find out how Russell is cloning himself, and why you should consider doing something similar.
---Transcript---
Hey whatâs up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, itâs late night and Iâm headed to the office and I got another episode of Marketing Secrets podcast for you.
Alright everyone, so you may be wondering, âRussell, why are you going in the office again late tonight?â This is an exciting one. Thereâs just not enough hours in the day and I love my kids and so because of that I leave everyday at 3:00 for wrestling practice, which means I cut my day off by like two hours, which means I gotta squeeze it in somewhere. Especially right now while weâre trying to change the world. Itâs insane.
But Iâm pumped because what Iâm doing tonight is literally going to free me. Itâs interesting, I was hanging out at Tai Lopezâs house and we were talking about Clickfunnels, this is shortly after weâd passed our first 100 million in sales. I was talking to him and Alex Mayer, who is one of his business partners, and they were like, they asked how many sales people worked at Clickfunnels. I smiled and I was like, âItâs just me right now.â And theyâre like, âWhat? How did you do that? How is it just you?â and we kind of laughed.
And if you want to know how I did that, obviously go to the, weâre in the middle of our product launch right now, 10xsecrets.com, or depending when you get this maybe the launch will be over and the product will be gone. But if it still is available go to 10xsecrets.com. But thatâs how, really good presentations, spoke in front of masses, and did that for the last four years.
But eventually one becomes tired and one tries to figure out how am I going to scale this without me, is it even possible? Itâs funny, last year about this time, we decided we were going to build out a speaker team, so we found who I thought was going to be the right person to be the first test person and to grow it. And it turned out really, really bad, and thatâs as far as Iâm going to go into that. But it kind of made me just walk away from it last year and not want to do it, thinking it wasnât going to be possible and thereâs no way I can replace myself, Russell, because of the bad experience and the bad person we tried to do this project with.
So I kind of gave up on it, and then this summer we were in Kenya and I met my friend, Pete Vargus, and Pete told me about a project he worked back a few years ago. It was one of the survivors, or one of the people that passed away in Columbine or, I canât remember the exact story, Iâll probably mess it up. But that person went and gave a presentation and it was super inspiring and changed a bunch of peopleâs lives and Pete heard it and it changed his life.
So he went to the person and he was like, âI want to take this presentation on the road.â And the guyâs like, âI canât, I need to be home with my family. What if I build a speaker team of people and went out there and the speaker team goes out and does all the selling for you?â and then Pete went behind the scenes and did that and built a huge speaker team and they went out and ended up having, I canât remember, a couple hundred speakers traveling all around the world doing presentations everyday somewhere in the country, giving this presentation. He was able to get this message out to more people, which is exciting.
So it kind of re got me excited about the project we started a year ago and walked away from, which was building out a speaker team. So some of you guys probably saw on Facebook live, in Kenya we did a Facebook live with Pete, talking about the concept of building a speaker team and had people apply. We ended up getting 250 deep applications that came in, which were insane.
From that we had all those people take my slide deck and go and make their own version and pitch it and do the webinar and send it back to us to see how they did. From that we had 50 or so people that submitted the thing back. So right there, whatâs that, 4 out of 5 gave up that fast when we asked them to do some work. And then from the 50 that came back, we went through all of them and we picked the top 20. And tomorrow the top 20 are going to be here in Boise. And weâre a two-day speaker training with them to teach them all my pitch.
So Iâm in tonight just cleaning up the slides and getting ready for tomorrow. Because tomorrow morning Iâm going to basically give the presentation as if Iâm one of them. So Iâm doing the funnel hacks presentation without being Russell. I have to be one of them so they can see what it sounds like and how you do it when you pull yourself out. So I have to tweak the slides a little bit and weâre adding some stuff in.
During the 10x launch, it was kind of fascinating. We did the upsell and I interviewed a whole bunch of people, like Armin Morin who invented the stack, and thereâs some things I do in my stack that he doesnât do that I like. But thereâs some things that he did and I didnât do that I love. So Iâm going back in and weaving some of those things into this as well. Just some super, super cool things.
So thatâs what Iâm working on tonight, to get that in place. The reason Iâm sharing this is I think all of us, me included, we think that what we have is a super power and weâre the only ones who can do it. So every time you try to think about scaling youâre like, âOh I canât because itâs me and I canât scale me because I am a rock star.â
And what this is, if you look at all the things Iâve done in this business, thereâs things that I, I donât know how to code. Todd and Ryan and all the geniuses they do all the coding for Clickfunnels. I donât know how to do customer support, I canât do most things. But the one thing thatâs my unique ability is creating a presentation and then delivering that presentation. And up to this point itâs been me doing that, and itâs at the point now where itâs exhausting. I canât keep doing it.
I did a webinar a week every single week for years. And then I spoke around the country, around the world doing this for a long time. And I just canât physically do it anymore. Man, what if we had 20 people who were on the road every single month? Itâd be 20 or 30 presentations happening around the country every single month, which is really exciting. So thatâs what weâre working towards and what weâre trying to do, but itâs me literally replacing myself, cloning myself, and training and teaching them my pitch and my script and how it works, and building out this entire speaker team. So itâs really exciting.
So for any of you guys who have ever thought the same thought that I have, if I could just clone myself, if I could just whatever. Realize that you actually can. But it takes a little work. Itâs not just clicking a button and having the cloned sheep pop out the other side of the machine; you have to actually do something. But if you do it, it can free yourself.
So thatâs why Iâm coming in late tonight, to put in this extra effort. Because I told my wife and kids, âLook, this is my retirement.â Right now I speak a couple of times a year. Next year Iâm speaking at Grant Cardoneâs 10x event because there will be 35,000 people, so I canât say no to that. But thatâs it. Iâm not speaking anywhere else next year.
So because of that, weâre plugging in these speakers and itâs going to be amazing. So thatâs the goal now, to train them on my presentation, and my pitch and to get them learning it, and understanding it, and mastering it, and presenting it. And sure, they may not close the same percentage that I do, but if they can close 75% as well as I do, and weâve got 20 of them and I donât have to leave my house, thatâs the best clone Iâve ever seen.
So thatâs the game plan. So with you, my question for you is what is your unique super power, and could you clone yourself? If you had to, if you had to listen to Russell saying, âLook, four years from now youâre going to be in a spot where you try to clone yourself.â What would you do now?
I wish I would have done this speaker team thing the first year. Can you imagine as soon as Clickfunnels first came out , if I would have stopped for a month and built out the speaker team and then sent 20 people out on the road instead of just me? I mean, we might not be at 100 million; we might be at, who knows, abillion, by now?
So for you, because you maybe think, âOh, in four years from now I may start trying to figure out how to clone myself.â What if you did it today? What would you have to create? What would you have to put together? What would you have to figure out? Who would you have to find? What would their skill set need to be to be able to replace your skill set?
Whatâs cool about this is I donât have to get them to write their own webinars, theyâre just taking mine. They just have to be good at presenting, and standing onstage, and following the script and doing it with enthusiasm and energy and excitement. And if they can do that, theyâll crush it right.
Anyway, Iâm excited; weâll see how it all goes. But thatâs the plan. So for you guys, that is my question for you. How could you clone yourself if you had to? Think about that and ponder on it because thatâs going to be the question you have to ask and the answer you have to figure out if you want to get true freedom.
Alright you guys, appreciate you all. Thank you so much for listening and weâll talk to you all soon.
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In the times in your life when you win, and the times in your life when you lose; the only real purpose is for you to capture a story to help more people.
On this episode Russell talks about his experience at Entrepreneur of the Year, and why he is grateful he didnât win. Here are some of the insightful things you will hear on todayâs episode:
How the Entrepreneur of the Year event is similar to a body building competition. How Russell plans to use the story of not winning the award in the future. And why you should look for every opportunity to add to your story, whether your winning or losing.So listen here to find out how The Entrepreneur of the Year Awards compares to body building competitions, and why Russell feels grateful to lose.
---Transcript---
Hey, good morning everybody. This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I got so much good stuff to talk to you guys about today. Entrepreneur of the year event, something funny with my kids, and a whole bunch more.
Hey everyone, man, I have like 12 podcasts in my head right now that I want to share with you guys, of lessons from this last week. Some of you guys know that this last weekend was the entrepreneur of the year, the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award ceremony.
Earlier this year I submitted for the entrepreneur of our region and I won it, which was really cool. And then basically all the regions get together and do a national tournament. So I was all excited to go to this national thing and compete and see if we could win the national entrepreneur of the year award.
So I thought, if weâre going to do this we should make an experience out of it right. That way we can do an episode of Funnel Hacker TV, that way itâs not just me going somewhere on an event because I go to a lot of events and itâs just like boring. So how to make this memorable for me and for my wife and for anyone else I want to bring.
So I decided, hey, Iâm going to bring my parents, because that would be fun to have them come to something like this. And then Dave and his wife Carrie wanted to come to, which was super cool. So the first thing was like, we can just fly there or what if we did it up right and just rented a private plane? So we rented a private plane, flew down, picked my parents up in Salt Lake, which my mom was certain she was going to die on the plane. Sheâd read a book about someone who got in a plane wreck one time. So because of that she was convinced that certain death was the only possible outcome for this vacation. It was really hard to convince her to go. But she agreed finally.
So we flew down and picked them up and went to this event. That night we got there, and they did it right. They had this huge dinner with this amazing buffet. It was amazing. Iâve been to a lot of buffets and this was like four steps past anything Iâd ever been to before. They had this dessert bar and they literally had a donut wall, a wall with these pegs coming out of it with thousands of donuts all over them.
They had this thing that looked like an ice cream bar with tons of different kinds of ice cream flavors, but it wasnât ice cream it was cookie dough. It was a cookie dough bar. It was insane. They scoop out tons of cookie dough into the thing and then they had chocolate covered bacon, and they hadâŠthe desserts alone were amazing. Anyway, it was amazing.
Then there was the Kelly Clarkson concert. So we were like 5 rows away from Kelly Clarkson and she did this huge show for us, a private event for everyone who was at this thing, which was super cool. And that was the first night.
The next morning we woke up and if you watched my instagram stories, I made some jokes, but we had a chance to see the winners of last yearâs entrepreneur of the year award. And Iâm going to kind of tease them, but also Iâm grateful for them, so Iâll talk about both sides of it.
But they are a venture backed company whoâs trying to solve cancer, which is really, really cool and Iâm grateful for people and entrepreneurs and companies like that. But the problem, the frustrating thing on my side is that theyâve raised $2 billion dollars in funding in this thing. So Iâm like, thatâs awesome. Iâm grateful that theyâve done that, what theyâre doing, that theyâre trying to stop cancer. Thatâs so valuable and helpful. But itâs funny because I donât know if I would consider that being an entrepreneur. Itâs like, the entrepreneur in this business, their full time job is to go sell people on giving them more money. And then they have people theyâve hired to solve cancer.
Youâre more like a glorified sales person whoâs just selling to VCâs. I donât know, but I donât think thatâs entrepreneurship, but maybe Iâm wrong. But I am grateful for what theyâre doing. They raised $2 billion, and itâs interesting because most of the companies that were there had all raised money. I think thereâs probably half a dozen of us who are boot strapped entrepreneurs and the rest were all like VC backed.
And it was funny because I was talking with Dave ahead of time about this, Iâm like, you know in the body building world thereâs two competitions. Thereâs one thatâs like the body building competition, everybody comes and thereâs no rules. They never say, âoh yeah, go use steroids.â But they donât test for it. So because of that, thatâs when you get guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferigno and these dudes who are insane. When you look at them youâre like, that canât be human. Itâs because theyâre not human, theyâre on steroids.
So thereâs that term, then thereâs the natural body building contest where you have to like not be on steroids to qualify. And those guys look way smaller. They look amazing, but standing next to each other youâre like, that dudeâs on steroids, thatâs the difference.
I feel like itâs the same thing here. The entrepreneur of the year award was like all these dudes who are steroids who took venture capitalistâŠgot $2 billion in funding, and then thereâs people like me, who are the natural ones. Who showed up and if you look at us by ourselves we look good, but you look standing next to someone who received $2 billion in funding itâs like, how do you compete with that. Itâs fascinating.
In fact, for those who were, I donât want to leave you in suspense. We did not win the entrepreneur of the year award. The guy who won it in our space is Thomas Siebold, which if youâve ever heard of Siebold, heâs a billionaire. He started a new company because heâs a billionaire, he just funded it and had other people fund it. How do you compete with that guy? Come on now, thatâs not fair. In fact, Siebold is the dude who Mark Benioff, who owns Sales Force used to work for. So he was Mark Benioffâs mentor.
Anyway, so itâs like, thatâs who I was competing against, billionaires. So I lost to the billionaire, but the billionaire was all roided out, so I donât feel too bad. Anyway, and then the dude who won entrepreneur of year overall, of all the categories, was the guy who started Groupon, which actually was really cool. Groupon was his sixth business and then he took it public, and now this is his new business. Again, it was confusing, but they went from zero to $2 billion dollar valuation, excuse me a billion dollar valuation in 2 years.
But again, they havenât sold much stuff, but because of all the money theyâve gotten from funding their value there. So once again, theyâre all roided out and they beat me. But it was still kind of fun to see.
And again, I want to step back, well in the intro of this podcast I make fun of it. About companies who cheat and take on venture capital. And while I do feel that, I am at the same time grateful that there are companies out there who are trying to cure cancer. Thereâs companies out there who are trying to do these things, that probably couldnât be done by a bootstrap entrepreneur, just because of the nature of what it is. It takes $1 billion apparently, in funding to cure cancer before you have the pill and start selling it. You canât start selling it ahead of time.
So I understand it and while I tease and I joke about it I am grateful for those entrepreneurs who are doing that direction. I just donât believe in it. I think for us bootstrap entrepreneurs there should be an award as well. So we may or may not being working on the Bootstrap Entrepreneur of the Year Award, because I think itâs something that needs to happen.
Just like in body building thereâs the body building competition, then thereâs the natural body building competition. I think thatâs more interesting to me and I think to you guys as well, because most of you guys donât have $2 billion in funding.
So itâs like, okay how do we actually, in fact itâs funny, one of the panels, they were doing the interview and they asked the guy, âWhatâs it like as an entrepreneur taking on the risk?â and the guy was like, âWell, you know the nicest thing about risk, I just go back to my venture capitalists and get them to give us a couple more hundred million dollars, and then the risk fear goes away.â Iâm like, what? Thatâs the worst answer ever. Itâs like, what do you do when you hit plateaus? I just take more steroids. Come on.
I wanted to be like, thatâs when we freaking hustle. We recruit a team of people that believe in our vision. We work our butts off for free and we create something truly remarkable and then we sell it to our customers, and they love it so much they finance it. Thatâs the answer I wanted, but no. Itâs like, we go back and take another hit of roids.
Anyway, thatâs kind of interesting. But I digress, there were so many other cool things that I wanted to share with you guys. So many cool stories I could share with you. In fact, Iâm sure Iâll do separate episodes. Like for example, Jennifer Gardner came and spoke and she is funny, I teased my wife, I think everyoneâs allowed to have one celebrity crush right, and sheâs totally my celebrity crush. Ever since 13 Going on 30, I was like she is the coolest ever.
So sheâs been my celebrity crush, and she came and spoke. And she was so amazing, not just from the point that I have a crush on her, but just insanely amazing. I was so impressed with her. Anyway, Iâll tell you some stories about her in another episode.
But blown away by her. Just so many cool things that happened. But the biggest thing I wanted to share with you guys, and this is kind of the purpose of this podcast, and then Iâll go deeper on other episodes about some of the specific things I learned. Thereâs some really cool lessons I learned from watching the Kelly Clarkson Concert. Specific things from Jennifer Gardner, specific thingsâŠ.but for this one, what I wanted to talk about, the natural vs the regular body building contest, how it relates to entrepreneurship.
Because I think sometimes some of may look at those guys and be frustrated. And itâs like, no, just understand that they have a role in this world and weâre grateful for them, but itâs not who we are. Weâre the natural body builders and itâs something to be proud of, I think, that you bootstrap your company. So thatâs number one.
But number two is like, I didnât win the contest. Itâs funny because so many people reached out to me, âOh Iâm so sorry, Iâm so sorry.â And itâs funny because I didnât care. I didnât go into to it to do it. Iâm always going into things looking for the story. Whatâs the story Iâm going to be able to tell because of this experience? I think thatâs something that all of us should be looking at because we all go through tough times.
And Iâm not saying this was a tough time for me, it wasnât. I was fine not winning. But when Iâm going through something Iâm looking for whatâs the story thatâs going to happen in this thing that I can use to inspire somebody or to sell something or to whatever. Iâm always talking to you guys about you need to be building up your rolodex of stories. When I do a webinar, the reason I can do webinars so fast, and I can crank them out and I can sell well is because Iâve got this huge rolodex of stories that Iâve been building up for over a decade that I can pull out really quick in a momentâs notice.
So Iâm like, what are the stories that I can pull out of this experience that I can use in other things? Like when I spoke at the 10x event and I did 3.2 million dollars in sales. And everyoneâs like, âOh my gosh, you made 3.2 million dollars in sales.â Iâm like, yeah, that was cool but Iâve got a story now, and that story will make me ten times that 3.2 million. To be able to tell that story about how Iâm the highest paid public speaker in the world. How I netted a million dollars an hour. All those things, I will sell way more product from that than I ever did from the money I made at the event.
Iâm looking for the story. So for me, itâs like this whole thing happened. I didnât win it, but like for me, the story is this whole thing I kind of shared with you guys today, this natural versus unnatural. And I promise you, we are going to building a Bootstrap Entrepreneur of the Year Award and a thing, and itâs going to be a movement and a big thing, based on this story.
The fact that I lost, Iâm so grateful that I lost because now I have this story about, âHey I lost, but I was going up against people who were on steroids.â Itâs not really, itâs like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Letâs come back and letâs build the natural body building contest for entrepreneurs. Now I have a story I can share, and a reason and a purpose and a thing thatâs going to call to all of my people. Itâs going to call out to the bootstrap entrepreneurs. The people I love serving are going to hear that message and be like, âYes, thatâs who I am.â And theyâre going to hear my voice and they will come to me.
So thatâs the magic. In the experience Iâm looking for the story because the story is the next phase of the thing.
So for you, I want you guys to keep your eyes open more for the stories that are happening. Every day when you have success thereâs a story there thatâs more valuable than the success. When you fail thereâs a story there thatâs more valuable than the failure. And most of us just go through it and weâre upset or happy for the thing that just happened.
Itâs like, no, no, no. That thing that happened was good, but it was not the finish line. It was the story you need to inspire people to sell your next product, to do your next thing, to create your movement, to call a new segment of people into the marketplace. Whatever it is for you, the story is the key.
So keep your eyes open for the stories that are happening around you. Thatâs the magic, thatâs what I want to make sure you guys arenât missing, because if you did, for me that whole weekend could have been a wasted weekend. âI lost, letâs not talk about it.â No, no, no. âI lost, letâs talk about it.â Thatâs more powerful.
Alright, with that said, Iâm home. Iâm going to go get ready for the day. A lot of fun stuff happening this week. Iâll take you guys on some of the journeys but we are, my kids haveâŠ.so todayâs Monday morning, Iâve got a wrestling match Tuesday with the kids. Wrestling match Thursday and then Friday and Saturday thereâs a wrestling tournament. So we got wrestling all week.
And I was supposed to fly down Friday and Saturday to go be with the Harmon Brothers, to work on part two of our viral video campaign with them, the problem is that it was booked on Friday/Saturday and I found out later that my boys had a wrestling tournament Friday/Saturday. So I was like, okay my kids are more important than my company. Iâm not missing the wrestling tournament. So I had to talk to them and move things around. So whatâs happening is Tuesdayâs wrestling match ends, after that I jump on a private plane and fly to Provo to get to Sundance, so I can be there for the writing retreat.
So Iâm there all day Wednesday at the writing retreat, half day Thursday, and then I jump in a plane and fly back and get back just in time for my kidsâ wrestling match on Thursday night. So this whole detour is costing me like $16 grand in flights to be able toâŠ.
So anyway, someday Iâm hoping my kids listen to this episode someday when their father is dead and theyâre like, âI wonder if my dad loved me?â and be like, âYes, he loves you a lot. He rearranged heaven and earth so he wouldnât miss a wrestling match because thatâs how much he loves you.â So I hope they listen to this someday and know how much I love them. They are the coolest little things in the whole world and I cannot wait to watch them wrestle.
So thatâs my week this week, plus we got a speaker training happening in Boise so Tuesday/Wednesday we are training a team of 20 speakers to go out and do my presentation on the road, which is exciting. So Iâm working on presentations today to train them on my stage pitch. Thatâs happening today and then 10x secrets, weâre in the middle of launch right now, itâs doing really, really well. And I think Iâm running a webinar because I think Monday Iâm going to be doing a webinar to close out the whole thing.
So I got that happening this week plus while Iâm in Provo working with the Harmon Brothers, that night weâre all trying to get them all of our new Org Chart business development stuff with the company. Itâs going to be an insane week. If I survive this week, then Iâll have earned Thanksgiving next week.
So anyway, I appreciate you guys all, thanks for listening. If you learned anything from this, take on your phone, you can click on the buttons and take a screenshot of the screen of this podcast episode, do that and then go to Facebook or instagram, or pinterest, wherever you go and post the video and say, âI just listened to Russellâs story about âblahâ, check out his podcast.â Tag me so I can see it and also hashtag Marketing Secrets, and letâs get some other people listening to this episode. Appreciate you guys, thanks so much for everything, and weâll talk soon.
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A few of my final thoughts at 2:36 in the morning, before we launch the 10X Secrets funnel.
On this episode Russell talks about his backstory and how he learned how to persuade people to buy, and how you can learn to do it too because the 10x Secrets product was about to launch. Here are some of the super awesome things in todayâs episode:
Who Russell learned the art of closing from and how you can have access to the exact same course. What kinds of things are included in the new 10x Secrets course. And how if you pay attention to the buying process of the 10x Secrets course, you can learn how it was done.So listen here to find out why the 10x Secrets product is special, and why Russell is so excited about it.
---Transcript---
Whatâs up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to a freezing cold, late night Marketing Secrets podcast.
Alright everyone, it is officially 2:36 am in the morning. By the time youâre listening to this, this will have already happened, but tomorrow is the 10x Secrets product launch. And I am so excited. I donât even know how to explain my excitement level.
I feel like thereâs been a lot of cool things that Iâve tried to bring into this world. I know we all have these legacy projects we have. So I think Clickfunnels is by far my biggest legacy project. This thing we brought into the world to help empower entrepreneurs to sell more products and change the world, which has been good. But I think the thing that, I think the books that Iâve written have helped simplify the process for people. But I think the thing thatâs the most beneficial is like, having a funnel is really good, understanding how to do it, how to create products is really good. But how to sell is the most important thing.
There are so many entrepreneurs who could change so many peopleâs lives, but they do not have the ability to persuade somebody into giving them money so that you can go and transform and change their lives. And I think for me that was the key. I spent 15 years of my life, for those who donât know the backstory, trying to understand this skill.
I went to my very first marketing event probably 13 years ago I think, 12-13 years ago, as an awkward, shy internet nerd who had no friends, outside of my beautiful wife and some wrestling buddies. And I was trying to figure out how to make money online. And I went to this event and I was expecting to learn SEO and PPC and all these things, and instead I saw a speaker get up, talk about internet marketing and at the end he sold his package, and I watched in amazement as people ran to the back of the room.
It was a $2000 course, I did the math, â2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, oh my gosh that guy made $68,000 in an hour and a half.â The next guy got up and spoke and he sold, he sold a $5000 package and I did the math and by the time he was done he did like $120,000 in sales. And I saw the next speaker and the next and the next. And after three days of watching this, I was like I have to learn this skill. I have to become a master of this.
So I started the journey and it was not an easy road for me. There were ups and downs and bumps and bruises and all sorts of nightmares in between. Lonely nights, long trips on the road. Some trips where I financed, you know, I pay to fly out and go to hotels and everything, and Iâd go and Iâd speak and sell and I wouldnât actually sell anything and Iâd fly home. And man, Iâd lost $6000 trying to go sell on this thing. $6000 we didnât have, expecting to go out and kill something and bring it home, and coming home empty handed, not once but multiple times.
But I kept doing it and kept doing it and kept doing it until I started learning how you persuade, how you teach, how you make an offer, how to control a room, how you get people to do what you need them to do so you can actually change their life.
And that was a 12-13-14 year journey for me and I really feel like tomorrow, actually today a couple hours from now, I think itâs nine hours from now the launch. Nine hours and 21 minutes is the launch. But I feel like this is the culmination of all that. Where Iâm taking everything and putting it into a super product. It literally is, it was after the Grant Cardone event where I did 3.2 million dollars in 90 minutes and then 30 days later I got onstage at my own event and did 13 million dollars in 90 minutes. I made more in 30 days than I had made prior, usually in multiple years.
And after the 10x event I promised everyone Iâd do a training, showing them how I did it. And I did a 6 hour training and that is the foundation of this product, that 6 hour training. And then as we started creating this as an, in fact, if you guys listen to the podcast, if you remember after the Grant Cardone event I said, some of you guys are going to be blown away I made 3.2 million dollars, but this is just the beginning. Iâm going to make way more telling the story about how I made 3.2 million dollars. So this is the beginning of that.
So as we started putting the offer together it kept getting better and better and kept plugging in more things. We spent this whole day working on my webinar slides and making template versions of them that people can take and literally have my slides and my power points, my keynotes so you can go tweak them and edit them for yourself. I did a whole training for like 40 minutes on how to edit the power points and all the psychology behind them.
I did, I found a 2 Âœ hour training I did with my inner circle that showed the choreographing of the 10x event and also the Funnel Hacking Live event. Like how did we do 13 million dollars in sales at our own event? We choreographed every minute of the entire event and I walk through the choreographing of that. I put that in the course, I put interviews from all the legends that I learned closing from. I canât even tell you how much we put into this thing, but itâs insane and Iâm proud of it.
I hope that all of you guys get it, not just because I wanted to make money, I do, Iâm not going to lie. But thatâs not the purpose. I want you to get it because of how much money itâs going to make you. Itâs going to give you the ability to actually persuade your audience to give you money. And when they give you money you will have the ability to help them and serve them and change their lives.
People who donât pay, donât pay attention. And if you canât get someone to pay, youâre not going to have the ability to get them to pay enough attention to your message to be able to change their life. And this skill set that I want to teach you guys, it will change everything.
I could show you guys tons of people that have gone through pieces of this training. Brandon and Kaelin went through this training, boom Lady Boss was born. Dan Henry went through this training, youâve see how heâs blown up. I could show you hundreds of people who have learned this stage presenting webinar style that I do and have built multiple million dollar a year businesses. And this is the first time Iâve put everything together in one spot.
So if I was you, a couple things. Number one go to 10xsecrets.com right now and buy slowly. The funnel, Iâm very proud of this funnel. Thereâs so much in it and if you put your student glasses on when you buy, youâll notice what is he doing? Why is he doing it? Whereâs the layout? Why is the button here? Why does the order form look like this?
All those things are strategically thought out and tested. Theyâre not something we just make up, so buy slowly, itâll be worth the price of admission alone, just to study the funnel. Number two buy the upsells because they are insane. I wish I could tell you everything. The order form bump is my power point slide deck and the training goes with it. It is insane. If you donât buy that, you must hate money.
The first upsell, I literally got John Childers, the dude who trained almost all public speakers for 20 years, the people who, heâs like the founder of this industry. He licensed his course to us, and his course, itâs called Childers Chunks. Itâs not just like, hereâs a course on how to speak from stage. It literally is all the stories he uses to break false beliefs, and you listen to the course and he gives you the chunks. You learn them, you memorize them, you plug them into your presentation and now you can use them. We licensed that entire thing from him, so you get that as part of the upsell, which that alone, I canât tell you how many times Iâve listened to that course and how many times I memorized his stories to be able to tell them in my presentations.
The fact that he allowed us to license that is insane. Itâs insanely good. The second upsell is my FHAT event. We used to charge $15,000 for it, and now you can literally do the FHAT event virtually from your home at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost. If I was you I would invest in everything. I wish I could just force you to buy it all, because itâs worth it all. And we give everything at these hugely discounted prices because I want everyone having this.
Like I said, as soon as you learn how to persuade, everything will change for you. Anyway, thanks for letting me rant and talk about it because Iâm so excited. If you havenât checked it out, go to 10xsecrets.com, pay attention, watch the process, watch the videos, watch the copy, read the copy, look at the links, look at the structure, look at the order forms, look at the upsells, look at the copy at the bumps, this is a marketing education that I hope you guys are paying attention to.
Alright, with that said, Iâm going to bed. I have to be here in like 3 Âœ hours to work out with my guy. So itâs going to be a short night, early morning, but then the launch is tomorrow and thatâs the best part. So thanks everyone, have a great night and Iâll talk to you guys soon.
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A cool new way to look at how you structure your sales funnel.
On this episode Russell talks about a new kind of funnel heâs been developing for the 10x Secrets launch, called the Unboxing Funnel. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:
What an Unboxing Funnel actually is. How you can use the Unboxing Funnel in addition to the webinars you already have to sell the same products. And how this funnel can allow new customers to come in, who you would be unable to close on a $1,000 webinar funnel.So listen here to find out what an Unboxing Funnel is and you can use it.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today weâre going to be talking about what I call an unboxing funnel.
Hey everyone, I hope you are all having an amazing weekend. I am actually out today in my yard. Weâve been having fun with the kids, cleaning things up, getting ready for winter, which is near upon us. And Iâm hoping the wind doesnât blow too loud as Iâm sharing this stuff with you. But I just got this thought in my head, and Iâm excited and wanted to share with you.
So Iâm going to dive deep into an unboxing funnel because next week weâre launching out 10X secrets master class, which Iâm really proud of and really excited for. And what weâre doing in is what I call an Unboxing Funnel, so Iâm going to break down what that is and share it with you guys because I think for a lot of us marketers when weâre doing things, we only look at things one way. Like a lot of you guys are doing webinars and youâre looking at that one way, so I want to share with you this because basically what weâre doing is what weâre calling an unboxing funnel, which is like a webinar, but weâre chipping out the side and breaking it up and unboxing it into a really cool offer.
So Iâm going to go walk you through that in a second. But first Iâd love to get your guysâ feedback because I started thinking, I donât know if you guys all do the same thing, but when I see people Iâm competing against do thingsâŠ.Iâm always watching, right. I think it comes from me growing up as a wrestler. As a wrestler I knew what I was trying to accomplish. First I wanted to be State Champ, then I wanted to be an All-American, then I wanted to be a National Champ.
So I had these things and Iâm watching all the people Iâm competing against. So Iâm watching the matches, Iâm watching the scores, Iâm watching what theyâre doing, Iâm watching the moves theyâre good at, then Iâm practicing based on that. So Iâm back in my, Iâm watching a tournament and I see a guy whoâs better than me, who wins a tournament. Maybe I take third, he wins it. I watch the match, I study it, I go back to my dorm room, I start figuring out how do I beat this guy? This is what he did, and how he did it. I gotta get better in these positions and this thing. So when I had the chance to wrestle him next time, Iâd be able to beat him.
That was my whole life. That was twenty years of my life, which is, if you wonder why I compete so much in business and why I love this game, itâs because itâs the same thing. Iâm looking at my competitors and what theyâre doing and trying to figure out the next move. Itâs like a game of chess for me.
Itâs fascinating to me, I donât feel likeâŠ.for some reason, no one is being willing to step up and hard core compete against us, which is kind of frustrating as a competitor, Iâm used to that. Iâm not used to that, I want people to step up and compete. And instead nobody really is, which I guess is probably good. But at the same time it always surprises me.
So I look to people Iâm competing against and Iâm watching, I donât know about you but I watch what they do. Itâs like Chess and Iâm looking at the moves theyâre making. I see the move they make and then I try to, based on this Iâm going to do this. And this is where I got to get stronger, and this is where I gotta protect ourselves, which is logical strategy as an athlete, as a competitor.
But for some reason in business, nobodyâsâŠI donât know. Itâs interesting. So instead what I do is I watch as our competitors make moves, and then what I do is I put myself in this role where Iâm like, if I was consulting these people, this is what I would do. Itâs kind of a fun exercise in my head.
In fact, I remember probably two and a half years ago, I did a podcast episode, it was right have Clay Collins, the founder of Lead Pages had done something that was totally playing into, it played into our strengths and it was like the greatest thing he could have done for me. And I remember being so shocked.
Itâs like if I was wrestling in a wrestling match and the person is like stepping into me, which opens up the leg for me to shoot on. I was like, âWhy are you doing that.â I remember being so confused like, dude, you literally just opened up a gap to make it so easy to dominate you.
So Iâm so confused by this, so I did a whole podcast episode I remember that day, driving to the office. Like, âIf Clay Collins hired me as his consultant, this is what I would have said, and what I would have showed him, how he executed things poorly.â And it was a really funny episode. And then I realized I was probably a jerk to post that, so I didnât. I donât think I ever posted it. I donât even know. I may still have it somewhere. I should go look for it.
But it was a really funny podcast, me coaching my competitor on what they should have done, as opposed to what they did do. âYou stepped here, which means you were out of position, which is why we were able to attack and open up and expose your flaws, which in a wrestling match is how I beat you. Whereas, instead if you would have done this, this actually would have been, something for me as your competitor I would have been on my toes for.â
Anyway, I didnât publish that one because I thought it would be probably too soon. But part of me is almost wanting to do the same thing right now and publish for example, this is insanity to me. Word is on the streets, and Iâve seen some of the stuff theyâve been publishing, itâs crazy. Infusionsoft right now is in the process of changing their name. And in the documents sent out to their partners saying why they changed their name is literally because people are teasing them, calling them confusion soft.
Iâm like, you guys have a 18, 19, 20 years of branding behind this thing, and youâre literally changing your name because people in my community, and I didnât start this, it was all them, have been teasing them and calling them confusion soft. It just blows my mind. I want to, as a marketing consultant I want to be like, âDude, what are you doing? Thereâs no betterâŠif I were wrestling you literally just stood straight up and put your arms down by your side, and itâs almost impossible for me to not score and take you down at this point.â Itâs strategically insanity, but thatâs the move theyâre making right.
So part of me, and itâs not just that I tease them, thereâs all, like itâs happening with other businesses around, like, people I look at like, these are legitimate competitors that could have a shot if they would just play their cards right. And theyâre doing everything, theyâre literally like, âHereâs my leg Russell.â And Iâm like, âIs this a joke? Are they setting me up?â And I grab the leg and take them down and Iâm like, âNope, they literally gave me their leg.â What were they thinking?
So part of me wants to start a whole podcast where I just critique my competitors and tell them what they should have done to actually be a threat, as opposed to giving us their leg and letting us just take them down. Maybe I canât do that. Maybe I should do it in the past like, record them all and then publish them like a year later.
Anyway, let me know if you guys want me to do more of those things because I think itâs funny and at the same time I think itâs good for you guys because we should all be thinking strategic like that, looking who are the people who are also trying to serve your customers. And if youâre half as passionate as I am about my customers, the reason why Iâm so aggressive, if youâre wondering, âWhy is Russell such an aggressive marketer? Why doesnât he just play nicer?â Itâs like, I honestly feel in my gut if people arenât using us, if theyâre not using Clickfunnels, not going through our training, not doing our stuff, any other option that theyâre going through is like less effective for them, theyâre going to struggle.
I care about my customers so much that I, thatâs why I market so aggressively. Because I want my customers to have success and I feel like any other option is blocking them from the success that they deserve. So thatâs how you have to kind of look at your business, and when you realize that, âoh my gosh, these people are doing great things, thatâs cool. But man, I could serve these people at such a higher level. I need to do everything in my power to get my message out to protect and save these people that Iâm serving.â
Thatâs how I feel about it. Thatâs the gut feeling you should have as you are serving your audience, and if you donât have that yet, itâs like, oh man, you need to make your product better, make your service better, make your message simpler to understand, make your processesâŠ.whatever it is, make it better, because you should feel that way, because no one else is going to feel that way about your business except for you. Youâve got to feel that passion about it or else it doesnât make sense.
At the traffic secrets event I was telling, I went kind of on a little tangent rant with those guys there, but I told people, itâs funny people are always blown away, âRussell you close 15% of the webinar. You close 45% of the room.â Whatever the numbers are and Iâm like, âYeah, thatâs really, really good, but honestly when I get done Iâm so pissed that I wasnât able to close the rest of them.â Like, what was wrong? What did I say to, what more could I have done to convince these people that this is the path they need?
Like the 10X event, itâs funny because thereâs 9000 people in the room. We did 3.2 million, that means we closed a little over a thousand people, which means 8000 people didnât buy. And for me itâs like, what more could I have said to convince those other 8000 people? I donât know what else I could have done. And it frustrates me because Iâm like, I know any other option, any other alternative that they try to go for is not going to be nearly as, itâs not going to help them get to their goal faster than what Iâm offering them. Itâs like, what else can I do to make sure that happens. So thatâs why Iâm so always focusing on this game, because I care enough about our people. So thereâs number one.
Alright so let me know if you guys want me to do a podcast like that, because it would be funny.
Alright, let me go back to the purpose of what I want to talk to you guys about today. So the concept I want to talk about today is what weâre calling the unboxing funnel. So what is an unboxing funnel? Well, it comes down to the offer and the first time we started nicknaming it this was about last yearâs Funnel Hacking Live, because every year we get a bunch of ecommerce people. They come in and theyâre like, âThis funnel thing doesnât work for us. It works for info products, but not for physical products.â And Iâm like, âNo, you donât understand.â
And I started talking about like, imagine if somebody came to your ecommerce store, it could be Amazon, it could be Shopify, whatever. They came to your store and they bought everything you got right. They fill up the whole cart with all the good stuff, and all the things they would need to be successful with whatever the product or service is theyâre buying from you right.
What an unboxing funnel is, youâre taking this cart of everything they could buy and then youâre pulling things out of the box. You say, âWhatâs the very best thing that somebody could possibly want from me?â And thatâs what youâre going to lead with. Then whatâs the second best thing? Thatâs going to be my order form bump. Whatâs the third best thing? Thatâs going to be the next piece. So you have this, youâre unboxing all the offers that are in this cart, and then you put them in a logical sequence of order. And thatâs how you build a funnel the right way.
So if somebody comes in, like for example Trey Lewellen, when he launched his flashlight offer, the same one that did $20 million dollars in like 6 weeks, which is insane. He could have just had people come to his flashlight store and he has his flashlights and cases and warranties and all that stuff thatâs there. But instead he unboxed what his dream client would buy and said, âOkay whatâs the best thing they would want?â The best thing they would want is the survival flashlight, so thatâs the first offer. âWhatâs the next thing?â They probably want a case, thatâs the second thing. And the third thing, they want extra batteries. The fourth thing they want, a warranty. Fifth thing, faster shipping. And he unboxed all the things he could potentially give his customer at one time, and let them kind of pick and put them into a funnel. So thatâs what an unboxing funnel is.
So itâs funny because the product weâre launching next week, which by the time you guys hear this it will probably already be launched, so if you havenât purchased it yet, youâre insane. Go to 10xsecrets.com and go buy it. And if you donât buy, at least Iâm going to explain the strategy behind it so you understand.
So I very easily could have just done a webinar to sell 10x Secrets, but I have done a webinar multiple times and my role in this ecosystem at this point, I donât feel is to just keep doing the same thing. If I did then all Iâd get is people that are coming doing webinars through us. My job is to keep developing and inventing and creating new funnels, new ways to sell so that you guys can model them. Does that make sense?
The last thing I need in my life right now is more money. Thatâs not what Iâm doing this or the launch for. Itâs so I can create a model for the rest of our community to look at and then to emulate for their funnels. Itâs like if I just did another webinar, youâre like, âOh Russell did another webinar. Yay.â And thereâll be times I do more webinars, but itâs like the reason why I did the thirtydays.com funnel was so that you guys could listen to that, look at and be like, âOh my gosh, how could I use something like this in my business?â âHow could make a summit?â âHow could I do a challenge?â Weâre just innovating and developing and creating and doing new things, to be a model for you guys to come back and model what weâre doing, funnel hack it and take it back into your businesses.
So thatâs what I feel like my role is in this ecosystem. So this time weâre like, âHow do we create a cool funnel that shows people whatâs possible?â I feel like the people who study me close have done, theyâve all done webinars now and free plus shipping offers, because that was the two funnels we have done primarily. So itâs like, okay Iâm going to do new things, new concepts.
Alright so thatâs what this unboxing funnel is. Instead of doing a webinar, which I could definitely do a webinar. If you look at what the offer actually is, itâs a thousand dollar offer. If I were to sell it on a webinar I could easily sell it for a thousand dollars and itâd be, âYouâre going to get this and this and this and everything when you buy.â So instead what Iâm doing, instead of doing that, Iâm making an unboxing funnel. So Iâm unboxing the pieces out of here.
So if I was to sell this on a webinar, I look at whatâs the offer that on the webinar Iâd sell for a thousand dollars. So I have all that, and I look at all the pieces of the offer and say, whatâs the sexiest, best, most exciting piece of this offer. I figure out what this and I pull that part out, pull it out of the funnel and now it becomes the front end.
So youâll see when we launch this, the front end offer, what it actually is, and itâs going to be my 10x training, the 6 Âœ hour training, thatâs the core thing, and thereâs a couple other bonuses that go with it. Those are all things that would have been pulled out of the stack slide, and that becomes the frontend. Weâre going to sell that for anywhere from, I canât remember yet. Weâre still kind of going back and forth on the price. Somewhere between $197 to $300, somewhere in that range is where the front end will be. So people will buy that.
Then the order form bump on the page will probably be $47 and itâs going to be the Power Point slides and a video of me explaining how the slides work and kind of going through it and training them on the slides. So that was another component that would have been the stack slide if this had been a webinar.
The upsell now is going to be this closing program. Like, how do you close on a webinar, what are all the different closes. So Iâm bringing in all the people that I learned closing from, John Childers came and taught his Childers Chunks. In fact, he actually let me license, this is so cool. He used to sell a $25,000 speaker training where he taught his Childers Chunks and I paid him a ton of money to license that, so now inside the Closer Secrets program thereâs a licensing, we licensed how to do the Childers Chunks. So you get his entire $25,000 course, itâs in there.
And then I got, John Childers is the guy I originally learned public speaking from, so itâs like his best stuff. And then its Myron Golden coming in and teaching how to do the price marinade and the repitch. Weâve got Ted Thomas coming in teaching Trial closes, all the closing stuff. That becomes the second part of the offer. And that part will probably sell for, I believe, $297.
So we have a $197 product and a $297 upsell, a $47 order form bump, and then weâll have a second upsell, which will be the FHAT event. So those who came to the original FHAT event, itâs the same event that Natalie Hodson came to before she launched her Abs Core and Pelvic Floor product that a did a million dollars in four months. Itâs the same event that Brandon and Kaelin came through before their webinar. The same, all these people went through this event, they each had to be $25,000 to be in my inner circle to be at that event. It was a private event I did just for them, and people have talked about ever since because they have seen all the results from it.
But that event is then, three day event is the second upsell, which is the FHAT event recordings, stuff like that, which will be a $497 offer.
So if you take that, and you take all the products, the front end and the two upsells and you add up the price of what weâre actually selling it for it ends up being a thousand bucks, which is the same I would have sold it for on the webinar, but Iâve unboxed each of the pieces to turn it into an actual funnel. Does that make sense?
So $197 front end, $297 upsell, $497 upsell, but itâs the same product, but Iâve unboxed it. So instead of selling it through a webinar with a longer form presentation, I unboxed it and I can sell it differently. So I sell it through sales letters and sales videos and things like that.
Anyway, so thatâs what I wanted to share with you guys, because a lot of you are like, âI have a webinar thatâs killing it, what should my next offer be, Russell?â A lot of times the next offer isnât doing a whole new offer, itâs unboxing the webinar that youâre killing it with. Unbox it and create an unbox funnel, which is like front end, upsell, downsell type thing.
So itâs not like you have to create something new from scratch, itâs just youâre unboxing it, and selling it in a different way. Same product, different funnel, different strategy, different way to do it. Because some people may never be will to pay the $1000 for you course, but they may be able to pay $200 or $97 for your front end. And maybe they canât buy all the upsells, but it gets them in, and now you get a whole bigger segment of the market and helps get into your products, and then you can serve them and eventually youâll be able to send them up to the higher levels.
So thatâs kind of what I wanted to share with you guys today. The concept of an unboxing funnel and thinking back about that with whatever it is youâre selling. If youâre trying to figure out, whatâs my next funnel, whatâs my next product, whatâs my next thing? It might be just as simple as unboxing it and doing something amazing.
So there you go you guys. I hope that helps. With that said, Iâm going to go finish cleaning my yard and then go play with my kids some more. Weâre going to a football game tonight. Itâs the BYU, Boise State football game. For those who know my backstory, I wrestled at BYU and then they cut the wrestling program so I transferred to Boise State and wrestled at Boise State, and then they cut the wrestling program. So I honestly hope both teams lose tonight. I hate them both. But it will be fun to go with my kids and have a good time.
I know my daughter is a BYU fan, and my other boys are Boise State fans, so it will be kind of a family war and rivalry. And honestly Iâm going to cheer for whoever is winning because I flip flop because I played for both teams, I got letterman jackets for both teams, so Iâm allowed to.
Anyway, other than that you guys, have a great weekend. And if you havenât got your tickets yet to Funnel Hacking Live, what are you waiting for? You are insane. We are more than halfway sold out, tickets will be gone soon. Just go to FunnelHackingLive.com. We are putting on a huge show for you, Iâve already spent over a million dollars cash, out of my pockets, to put on this party for you and I donât know about you, but if I had a friend who was obsessed with marketing put on an event and spent over a million dollars to entertain me for four days and teach me funnels and change my life forever, I would spend a thousand bucks to get a ticket and show up. Unless you hate money, you should be there as well.
So appreciate you guys, hopefully Iâll see you at the event here in a couple of months. With that said, Iâll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.
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A scriptural lesson that applies directly to your business.
On todayâs episode Russell talks about dropping hints about cool things while describing other things, much like Jesus Christ while telling parables in the Bible. Here are some of the awesome things you will find in this episode:
Why many people miss some of the amazing hints Russell drops while telling everyone about cool things. What it means to listen with different ears. And how Russell finally figured out how to listen to the courses he was buying differently.So listen here to find out you can get even more awesome information from Russell if you just listen a little differently.
---Transcript---
Good morning, good morning everybody. This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to share with you guys something that is insanely cool and hopefully very applicable to you.
Alright everybody, I as you know talk a lot, probably way too much. But Iâm always talking right. Thereâs videos and podcasts and Facebook lives and Funnel Fridays and Funnel Hacker TV and Marketing Secrets podcast and on, and all these things. And itâs interesting, when Iâm talking Iâm always sharing things, Iâm always dropping ideas and thoughts and concepts and clues and hints. I remember yesterday I shared some stuff that I think was really, really profound, but I didnât share it in a way of like, âOkay, let me teach you a lesson.â And I was like, âThis is the lesson.â I didnât say that, I just shared something really quickly.
Actually Todd and I were doing our Funnel State of the Union address that we do every Friday, kind of walking through the ups and downs, the pros the cons, all the stuff thatâs happening from the development side. So people are understanding, you know, that weâve got 50+ developers working around the clock to serve you guys. And most companies donât tell you about that side, and I was like, I want to bring Todd, my cofounder on to share those things.
So heâs sharing them and while we were talking, we were talking about different features that were coming out, and we shared this one really cool thing, which is Clickfunnels now tracks the stats of all your emails. So you look at every single email and be like, âhey, this email made 14000 dollars.â And then you can dig deeper and be like, âwhat funnels do those things come from.â
And what we did when we started testing this, we found that the emails we sent out, this email made $3 grand, this one made $15 grand, this one made $18 grand, we see the different price for each one going out. We dug deeper and itâs like, oh wow, this email $12000 came from the thing we were selling in the email, but $3000 came from the links in the footer of my email.
I was telling people, I was like, âI was so shocked that I was able to see this. Oh my gosh, not only am I making money from the email, but the links in the footer were also making me money.â And then I went on to the next thing.
Most people heard that, and the only thing we heard was, âOh cool, we can see the stats of how much money we made in our emails.â But there was this other lesson that was a second level deeper that was so much more powerful, that almost everyone who listened, didnât hear it. So it was the second lesson.
The second lesson as I was speaking was, âOh my gosh I found out these footer, links in my footer that are like, âhey you like stuff from Russell, here are links to my other products and services.â And just putting this block of links to my other products and services in the footer of my email, each email is making me 3-4 thousand dollars every time I send an email out.
Thatâs multiple millions of dollars a year, just from the footer links in my emails. I didnât break it down and stop and tell people that was the thing. But those who are listening with their ears, theyâre catching these things. So this morning as Iâm getting ready, weâre about to head out and have the kids work because itâs a nice Saturday, the phrase came to my head, it said, âHe who has ears, let him hear.â And I started thinking about that.
Everyoneâs listening to the same thing, but he who has ears let him hear. And I was like, thatâs a scriptural phrase, I remember hearing that. So I went to, I have this app that you can search all the scriptures for things, so I just typed in âhe who has ears, let him hear.â And in the new testament alone, the new testament alone that phrase is used 50 times. 50 times, and itâs usually if you look at it deeper. Itâs usually Christ will tell a parable, or tell a story and before he does he says, âHe who has ears, let him hear.â And then he tells the story.
And people are like, âOh that story is really, really good.â And they move on. But whatâs interesting is that in every parable thereâs different levels of depth. Itâs like, oh, hereâs this story. Oh, I feel good. I heard this story. But then if you look deeper, âHe who has ears let him hear.â Those who are listening with the right ears, theyâre hearing a different message, or hearing a more important message, or hearing what Christ actually needed people to hear.
So for me, Iâm thinking about that in context to this. Itâs like, Iâm always sharing things. A lot of you guys maybe saw the Funnel Hacker TV episode we did a little while ago about my trip to San Francisco and youâre like, âOh it was fun, Russell had a good time. It was fun to see all the stuff.â But itâs like, man, there were 10 different deep, profound lessons that were shared in that thing that werenât like, âLet me stop real quick guys, let me explain this lesson.â
But it was like, as Iâm going through the video and weâre doing the vlog, we were talking and sharing things and there were all these other lessons that most people missed.
So I wanted to bring this up for a couple of reasons. I want you guys to start listening with different ears. Start listening with, what are all the hints and secrets and things that Russellâs dropping in every day conversation? Theyâre in the books, theyâre in the podcasts, theyâre in the videos. All the stuff weâre putting out, weâre not putting out just put out, right.
Sometimes we put out something and itâs like, âWhy would Russell put that out?â And itâs like, those who are listening with the right ears are going to capture different things than those who are just scrolling through their news feed and seeing stuff.
So my moral for you today, is he who has ears, let him hear. What that means is as youâre seeing stuff and youâre listening to things you guys, listen for the secondary story. Listen to the secondary meaning of the thing that Iâm not able to share all the time like, âhereâs the cool ninja thing.â Iâm just sharing, in the process of me telling stories and doing things, thereâs all these things that are happening behind the scenes that most people are actually missing.
And I know that hit me up, I know the people that are listening because, for example, just certain people. Steven Larsen is one who listens with different ears and Iâll say something and heâll, I know that he heard it because all the sudden three days later, Iâll say it in a podcast and like three days later Iâll get a message like, âOh my gosh, you said this did you know thatâŠ..â Iâm like, âYep, heâs listening with the right ears.â
Brandon Poulin is the same way. Iâll say something and then Brandon will message me and be like, âDude, blah, blah, blah.â Or Kaelin will hear it. The people who are having the most success are the ones who are listening with those ears.
I remember, another way I can kind of put this, first time I noticed it in myself was, I was buying everybodyâs stuff for a long time, I was a buyer. I was buying thing after thing after thing. And I wasnât getting a lot of value out of it until I started listening with different ears. I remember I started buying, but I started buying peopleâs things slower. I started studying not just what they were selling, but how they were selling it. No oneâs telling you, âThis is how Iâm selling you.â
But I started listening with those ears, like âHow did they get me so excited? Why was I so pumped to buy this product? Why was I anticipating? Why was I on the edge of my seat for days or weeks or months waiting to give this person money?â Iâm listening with different ears now because Iâm trying to figure out what were they doing? I got more value out of watching what they were doing a lot of times than the actual buying of the product where theyâre teaching what theyâre doing.
Thatâs the secret, listening with different ears, paying attention differently. Donât just listen for the overarching storyline. What are the sub lessons that are happening? And as you start looking for those, you guys, Iâm dropping them all the time. And I wish I could do a podcast up front for every single one explaining, âHey guys, this is what this means exactly.â But I canât. Iâm just going thorugh and sharing as much as I can and those who have ears will hear. So for you, thatâs the lesson and the moral, to start listening with different ears. Listen for the underlining messages because theyâre there all the time, all around you.
Alright guys, I gotta go clean my room, or clean the outside. My daughter, Norahâs yelling at me on the intercom saying, âDad, where are you?â So I gotta go. Appreciate you guys, have an amazing day. And weâll talk to you guys soon.
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Listen to part two of my private coaching session with Nic Fitzgerald. The lessons I shared with him here are the same ones I would share with you if we could meet face to face.
On todayâs episode Russell continues his chat with Nick Fitzgerald and gives him a list of seven things he can do to help his business grow. Here are some of the awesome things to look forward to in this episode:
What a few things that Nick got close to doing totally right, but missed a few key elements. How Nick can collaborate with others in the Two Comma Club X to be able to grow his customer list. And how Russell went from being a nobody, to having Tony Robbins call him to ask for help and how Nick can use that advice to advance his own business.So listen here to find out what the 7 things are that Nick and anyone else can do to grow a business.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. Iâm so excited, Iâm here on stage right now at the Two Comma Club X event with Mr. Nick Fitzgerald onstage. A year ago I gave a podcast to him about how to make it rain and this is section number two.
Now those of you who donât know, in the last 12 months since I did that podcast heâs been making it rain and heâs been changing his life, his familyâs lives, but more importantly, other peopleâs lives as well. And itâs been really cool, so thatâs what weâre going to cover today during this episode of the podcast.
So welcome back you guys. Iâm here on stage with Nick Fitzgerald, so excited. So I made a list of seven things that if I was to sit in a room with him in front of a whole bunch of people Iâd be like, âHey Nick, youâre doing awesome, but hereâs some things to look at that I think will help you a lot with what youâre doing.â
So number one, when Nick first kind of started into this movement that heâs trying to create, I donât know when it was, if you created this before or after. When did you create the Star Wars video?
Nick: This was, we talked in July, it was September/October. So a few months later.
Russell: How many of you guys have seen his Star Wars video? Okay, Iâm so glad. For those who are listening, about 10% of the room raised their hand, the other 90% who are friends and followers and fans of Nick have never seen the Star Wars video. His Star Wars video is his origin story and it is one of the best videos I have ever, by far the best video Iâve seen him do, it is insanely good. It comes, do you want to talk about what happened in the video? Itâs insanely good.
Nick: So I told the story of, Iâm a huge Star Wars nerd, so if you didnât know that, now you do. When I was young my grandma who lived in the same neighborhood as me, she took me to go see Return of the Jedi in the movie theater and I was such a Star Wars nerd, even at a young age, that when I was playing at the neighbors house, and you know, itâs the 80s, so mom and dad are like, âNick, come home for dinner.â That kind of thing, I would ignore them. I would not come home until they called me âLukeâ. No lie. I would make them call me Luke, or I would ignore them. I would not hear them.
Russell: Had I known this in high school I would have teased him relentlessly.
Nick: So my grandma took me and I remember going and it was so fun because we took the bus, it was just a fun thing. And we went and I just remember walking in and handing my ticket to the ticket person. And then popcorn and just the smells of everything. And again, this is the 80s so walking in the movie theater; I almost lost a shoe in the sticky soda, {sound effects} going on. I just remember how my feet stuck to the floor and all that stuff.
And then just being so excited to see my heroes on the big screen and Dark Vader, I just remember watching it. This is such a silly thing to get emotional about, but you know I remember the emperor and Darth Vader dying and all that stuff. It was just like, ah. It was a perfect day. Sorry sound dude. But it was just a perfect day with my grandma who has always been dear to me.
So the purpose of that video, Iâd put it off for a long time. I knew I needed to tell my own story if Iâm going to be helping somebody else tell theirs. And I put it off for a long time, because working through things, I was afraid that if it sucked, if the story was terrible, if the visuals were crappy, that was a reflection on me and my skills. I had worked on a bazillion Hallmark Christmas movies, you know how they put out like 17 trillion Christmas movies every year, if one of those sucks, no offense, theyâre not riveting television.
Russell: They all suck.
Nick: That wasnât a reflection on me, I was just doing the lighting or the camera work. I didnât write the story, it wasnât my story. But this was me, so I put it off for a long time because I knew if I didnât execute how I envisioned it, that it would reflect poorly on me, and it would be like I was a fraud.
So the purpose of the video, there were three purposes. One to tell a story and get people to connect with me on a personal level. As I told that story here, how many of you remembered your feet sticking to the floor of a movie theater? How many of you, when I talk about the smell of popcorn and that sound, you felt and heard and smelled that. So it was one thing, I wanted people to connect with me and just see that I was just like you.
Then I wanted to show that I could make a pretty picture. So I had that and I used my family members as the actors. And then I went and talked about howâŠand then I wanted to use it to build credibility. Iâve worked on 13 feature films and two television series and shot news for the NBC affiliate and worked in tons of commercials. So Iâve learned from master story tellers and now I want to help other people find and tell their story. And then I showed clips of stories that I tell throughout the years.
So that was, I just remember specifically when I finally went and made it live, I made a list of about 20 people, my Dream 100 I guess you could say. I just wanted to send them and be like, âHey, I made this video. I would love for you to watch it.â And Russellâs on that list. So I sent that out and made it live and then it was just kind of funny, it didnât go viral, I got like 5000 views in a day, and it was like âwhoa!â kind of thing.
But it was just one of those things that I knew I needed to tell my story and if I wanted to have any credibility as a story teller, not as a videographer, but as a story teller, being able to help people connect, and connect hearts and build relationships with their audience, I had to knock it out of the park. So that was my attempt at doing that.
Russell: And the videoâs amazing, for the 10% of the room who saw it, it is amazing. Now my point here for Nick, but also for everyone here, I wrote down, is tell your story too much. Only 10% of the room has ever seen that video or ever heard it. How many of you guys have heard my potato gun story more than a dozen times? Almost the entire room, for those that are listening. Tell your story to the point where you are so sick and tired of telling the story and hearing it, that you just want to kill yourself, and then tell it again. And then tell it again. And then tell it again, because it is amazing. The video is amazing, the story is amazing.
How many of you guys feel more connected to him after hearing that story right now? Itâs amazing. Tell t he story too much. All of us are going to be like, âI donât want to hear the story. I donât want to tell the story again.â You should be telling that story over and over and over again. That video should be showing it. At least once a week you should be following everyone, retargeting ads of that video. That video should be, everyone should see it. Youâve got 5,000 views which is amazing, you should get 5,000 views a day, consistently telling that story, telling that story.
Because youâre right, itâs beautiful, itâs amazing and people see that and theyâre like, âOh my gosh, I need that for my business. I need to be able to tell my story the way he told that story, because the connection is flawless.â And I think my biggest thing for you right now, is tell your story more. Tell that thing.
Youâre telling good stories, but that story, thatâs like your linchpin, thatâs the thing that if you can tell that, itâs going to keep people connected to you for forever. Anyone whoâs seen that video, you have a different level of connection. Itâs amazing, itâs shot beautifully. You see his kids looking at the movies, with lights flashing, itâs beautiful. So telling your story more, thatâd be the biggest thing. Itâs just like, all the time telling that story over and over and over again. Thatâs number one.
Alright, number two, this oneâs not so much for you as much for most of everybody else in here, but number two is that energy matters a lot. Iâm not talking about, Iâm tired during the day. Iâm talking about when you are live, or you are talking in front of people, your energy matters a lot.
I was hanging out with Dana Derricks, how many of you guys know Dana, our resident goat farmer? By the way, heâs asked every time I mention his name is please not send him anymore goats. Heâs gotten like 2 or 3 goats in the last month from all of our friends and family members here in the community. Please stop sending him goats. He loves them but he doesnât want any more.
Anyway, whatâs interesting, I was talking to Dana, and heâs like, âDo you know the biggest thing Iâve learned from you?â and Iâm like, âNo. what?â and I thought it was going to be like dream 100 and things like that. No, the biggest thing that Dana learned from me, he told me, was that energy matters a lot. Heâs like, âWhen I hang out with you, youâre kind of like blah, but when you get on stage youâre like, baaahh!â and I started telling him, the reason why is when I first started this career, in fact, I have my brother right now pulling all the video clips of me from like 12 or 13 years ago, when I had a shaved head and I was awkward like, âHi, my name is Russell Brunson.â And weâre trying to make this montage of me over 15 years of doing this and how awkward and weird I was, and how it took 8-10 years until I was normal and started growing my hair out.
But Iâm trying to show that whole montage, but if you look at it like, I was going through that process and the biggest thing I learned is that if I talked to people like this, when youâre on video you sound like this. The very first, I think Iâd have an idea and then Iâd just do stupid things. So I saw an infomercial, so Iâm like I should do an infomercial.
So I hired this company to make an infomercial and next thing I know two weeks later Iâm in Florida and thereâs this host on this show and heâs like the cheesiest cheese ball ever. Iâm so embarrassed. He asked me a question and Iâm like, âWell, um, you know, duh, duhâŠâ and heâs like, âWhoa, cut, cut, cut.â Heâs like, âDude, holy crap. You have no energy.â Iâm like, âNo, I feel really good. I have a lot of energy right now.â Heâs like, âNo, no you donât understand. When youâre on tv, you have to talk like this to sound normal. If you just talk normal, you sound like youâre asleep.â Iâm like, âI donât know.â
So we did this whole infomercial and heâs like all over the top and Iâm just like, trying to go a little bit higher and it was awkward. I went back and watched it later, and he sounded completely normal and I looked like I was dead on the road. It was weird.
Brandon Fischer, I donât know if heâs still in the audience, but we didâŠBrandonâs back here. So four years ago when Clickfunnels first came out we made these videos that when you first signed up we gave away a free t-shirt. How many of you guys remember seeing those videos? I made those videos and then they lasted for like four years, and then we just reshot them last week because itâs like, âOh wow, the demo video when weâre showing CLickfunnels does not look like Clickfunnels anymore. Itâs completely changed in four years.â So Toddâs like, âYou have to make a new video.â Iâm like, âI donât want to make a video.â
So finally we made the new videos, recorded them and got them up there and we posted them online, and before we posted them on, I went and watched the old ones, and I watched the old ones and I was like, âOh my gosh, this is just four years ago, I am so depressing. How did anybody watch this video?â It was bad, right Brandon. It was like painfully bad. I was like, âoh my gosh.â That was just four years ago. Imagine six years ago, or ten years. It was really, really bad. And when I notice the more energy you have, the more energy everyone else has.
It seems weird at first, but always stretch more than you feel comfortable, and it seems normal, and then youâll feel better with it and better with it. But whatâs interesting about humans is we are attracted to energy. I used to hate people talking energy talk, because I thought it was like the nerdy woo-woo crap. But itâs so weird and real actually.
I notice this in all aspects of my life. When I come home at night, usually I am beat up and tired and worn out. I get up early in the morning, and then I work super hard, I get home and I get out of the car and I come to the door and before I open the door, Iâm always like, Okay if I come in like, ugh, my whole family is going to be depressed with me.â Theyâll all lower to my energy level. So I sit there and I get into state and Iâm like, okay, whew. I open the door and Iâm like, âWhatâs up guys!! Iâm home!â and all the sudden my kids are like, âOh dadâs home!â and they start running in, itâs this huge thing, itâs crazy, and then the tone is set, everyoneâs energy is high and the rest of the nightâs amazing.
When I come in the office, I walk in and realize Iâm the leader of this office and if I come in like, âHey guys, whatâs up? Hey Nick, whatâs up?â Then everyoneâs going to be like {sound effect}. So Iâm like, okay when I come in I have to come in here, otherwise everyone is going to be down on a normal level. I have to bring people up. So we walk in the office now and Iâm like, âWhatâs up everybody, howâs it going?â and Iâm excited and theyâre like, âOh.â And everyoneâs energy rises and the whole company grows together.
So l love when Dave walks through the door, have you guys ever noticed this? When Dave walks through the door, Iâm at a 10, Daveâs like at a 32 and itâs just like, he wakes up and comes over to my house at 4:30 in the morning to lift weights. I sleep in an hour later, and I come in at 5:45 or something, and I walk in and Iâm just like, âI want to die.â And I walk in and heâs like, âHey howâs it going?.â Iâm like, âReally good man. Youâve been here for an hour.â And all the sudden Iâm like, oh my gosh I feel better. Instantly raised up.
Itâs kind of like tuning forks. Have you noticed this? If you get two tuning forks at different things and you wack one, and you wack the other one, and you bring them close together, what will happen is the waves will increase and they end up going at the exact same level. So energy matters. The higher your energy, the higher everyone else around you will be, on video, on audio, on faceâŠeverything, energy matters a lot. So thatâs number two, when youâre making videos, thinking about that.
Alright number three, okay this, you were like 90% there and I watched the whole thing and I was so excited and then you missed the last piece and I was like, âOh it was so good.â So a year after that Facebook message came, you did a Facebook live one year later to the day, and he told that story on Facebook live. And I was like, âOh my gosh this is amazing.â And he told that story, and he was talking about it, and I was emotional, going through the whole thing again. This is so cool, this is so cool. And he told the story about the podcast, and this podcast was an hour long, and the thing and his life changed and all this stuffâŠ
And I know that me and a whole bunch of you guys, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs listened to this story and theyâre at bated breath, âThis is amazing, this is amazing.â And he gets to the very end, âAlright guys, see you tomorrow.â Boom, clicks off. And I was like, âAaahhh!â How can you leave me in that state? I need something, I need something.
So the note here is I said, make offers for everything. Think about this, at the end when you ended, and everyoneâs thinking, I want to hear that episode, where is that? How would it be? Now imagine you take the opportunity at the very end that says, âHow many of you guys would like to hear that episode where Russell actually made me a personal podcast? And how many of you guys would actually like if I gave you my commentary about what I learned and why it was actually important to me? All you gotta do right now is post down below and write âIâm in.â and Iâll add you to my messenger list and Iâll send you that podcast along with the recording where I actually told you what this meant to me.â Boom, now all those people listening are now on his list. Or they can even go opt in somewhere.
But all you did was tell the story and everything and we were all sitting with bated breath and I was just like, at the end make the offer. You guys want the stuff I talked about, you want the thing? You want the thing? And then you send them somewhere and now you captured them and consider them longer term and you can do more things with them.
It was like, hook, story, dude whereâs my offer? Give me something. But it was awesome. How many of you guys felt that way when you listened to that thing and youâre just like, âI donât even know where to find that episode. Russellâs got eight thousand episodes everywhere, I donât even know where to look for it.â You could have been like, hereâs the link.
Just the linkâŠ.if you guys canât figure out how to make an offer, go listen to a whole bunch of stuff, find something amazing and be like, âoh my gosh you guys, I was listening to this Tim Ferris podcast, he did like 800 episodes, every one is like 18 hours long, theyâre really hard to listen to, but I found this one from 3 Âœ-4 years ago where he taught this concept and it was insane. It was amazing; I learned this and this. How many of you want to know what that is? Okay, I have the link, if you message me down below Iâll send you the link to exactly where to find that episode.â Everyone will give it to you.
Youâll be like, âBut itâs free on the internet Russell.â It doesnât matter. You know where itâs at and they donât. They will give you their contact information in exchange for you giving them a direct link to the link.
Back before I had anything to give away for opt ins, guess what I used to do. I used to go to YouTube and I would find cool videos from famous people. One of my favorite ones we did was I went and typed in YouTube, âRobert Kiyosakiâ because he was one of my big mentors at the time. And there was all these amazing Robert Kiyosaki videos on YouTube for free. Tons of them. Hour long training from Robert Kiyosaki. Four hour long event from Robert Kiyosaki. All this stuff for free listed in YouTube. So I made a little Clickfunnels membership site, I got all the free videos and put them inside a members area and just like, âTab one, Robert Kiyosaki talking about investing, Robert kiyosaki talking about stocks, Robert Kiyosaki talkingâŠ.â
And I just put all the videos in there and made a squeeze page like, âHey, who wants a whole bunch of free, my favorite Robert Kiyosaki videos?â and I made a little landing page, people opt in, I give them access to the membership site, and then I went and targeted Robert Kiyosakiâs audience and built a huge list off his people. Dream 100.
Imagine with Dream 100 instead of doing just one campaign to all the people, if each person in your dream 100 you made a customized membership site with the free content right now, be like, âHey, youâve listened to a lot of Grant Cardone, heâs got four podcasts, 5000 episodes, thereâs only four that are actually really, really good. Do you guys wan tto know what they are? Opt in here, Iâll give you the four best episodes of all. I currated all these for you to give you the four best.â And target Grantâs audience with that, now you got all his buyers coming into your world. Is that alright, is that good.
Alright number four ties along with this. Number four, start building a list ASAP. I donât think Iâve ever seen you do a call to action to get a list anywhere, have I? After todayâs session youâre âŠ..just build a list. If you got nothing from this event at all, every time you do a hook and story, put them somewhere to build a list, because thatâs the longevity. Because thatâs where if Zuckerberg snaps his finger and you lose all your fans and followings and friends, and all the sudden youâre trying to build over somewhere else, it wonât matter because youâll have those people somewhere external and now you can message them and bring them back into whatever world you need them to be at.
But thatâs how you build stability in business. Itâs also how you sell this time, you want to sell it the next time and the next time, the list is the key. Funnel Hacking Live, the first Funnel Hacking Live it was a lot of work and we sold out 600 people in the room, and we kept growing the list and growing the list, the next year we did 1200. Then we did 1500, last year was 3000, this year weâre going to be at 5000. Weâre building up the list and building up pressure and excitement and then when you release it, it gives you the ability to blow things up really, really fast. Okay, that was number four.
Okay number five, I wrote down integration marketing, adding to otherâs offers to build a buyer list. So this is a little sneaky tactic we used to back in the day when I didnât have my own list, but I had a couple of skills and talents which you do happen to have, which is nice. If you have no skills this wonât work, but if you have skills youâre lucky.
So Frank Kern used to do this as well. Frank is sneaky. He used to do this all the time and I saw him doing it and Iâm like, âOh my gosh, heâs brilliant.â So Frank did a one hour presentation somewhere and he called it Mind Control, it wasnât Mass Control, but it was something like about how to control the minds of your prospects through manipulation and something sneaky. And the title alone was amazing. It was a one hour presentation he gave somewhere.
And he put it on these DVDs and what he did, he went to like Dan Kennedy and heâs like, âHey Dan, you have all of your buyer and you send them this newsletter every single month,â at the time they had 13000 active members, these were their best buyers. Heâs like, âThis DVD I sell for like a thousand bucks. Do you want to give it to all your people for free?â And Danâs like, âsure.â
And all the sudden the next month, Franks got his best CD with his best stuff in the mailbox of the 13000 best customers, every single person that Dan Kennedyâs been collecting for the last 15 years. So think about this. With your skill set, look at the other people in the market, all the dream 100 who are doing things and how do you create something you can plug into their offers, and every single time one of those people sell a product, your face is popping up as well.
Itâs called integration marketing, my first mentor Mark Joyner wrote a book called Integration Marketing, itâs a really fast read. You can read it in an hour, but it will get your mind set thinking about it. How can I integrate with what other people are always doing? Because I can go and make a sell, and make another sell, but I was like, when we launched Clickfunnels I was like, âHow can I figure out other peopleâs sales processes that are already happening and somehow inject myself into all these other sales processes?â That way every single time Steven Larsen sells something or someone else sells something, or all these people are selling something, it always somehow gets flown back to me.
I want every product, every course, everything happening in the internet marketing world to somehow have people saying my name. Thatâs my goal. How many of you guy have been to other peopleâs events and Iâm not there and they say my name? It makes me so happy. I get the instagrams from some of you guys, âHey so and so just said your name.â Iâm like, thatâs so good. How have I done that? I spent a lot of my life integrating into everybodyâs offers.
Initially when I first got started, every single person who had a product, I was an interview in everyoneâs product. I was like, looking at people launching a product, specific product launches coming, Iâd contact them. Product launch is coming up, âHey man, is there any way I could do a cool thing for your people? I could create this and give it to you and you could plug it into your product?â and everyoneâs like, âSure, thatâd be awesome.â And all the sudden, boom, they get 5000 new buyers came in and every single one of them got my thing. Theyâre hearing my name, hearing my voice and itâs just constant integration.
I think about how I met Joe Vitale, I talked about that earlier with the greatest showman. He was in an interview in a course I bought from Mark Joyner, I listened to it, fell in love with Joe Vitale, bought his stuff, given him tons of money over the years, a whole bunch of good stuff because he was integrated in that.
So looking at other ways to integrate, the skill set that you already have into other peopleâs marketing channels because then youâre leveraging anytime any of these partners make a sell, youâre getting customers coming through that flow as well. Cool?
Nick: Yeah.
Russell: That was number five. Number six, I call this one rainmaker projects, because we talked about rainmaker during the first podcast interview. So rainmaker projects are, and again when I first started my career I did tons of these, where itâs like, I was really good at one piece.
For you, youâre really good at video and story telling. And I look out here and be like, okay who is someone else here that is awesome? So and so is really good at making a product on Facebook ads. âYouâre really good at Facebook ads, so Iâll do the video for this course, you do the Facebook, you do the actual ads for us.â
And then, youâre awesome at doing the traffic and you bring in four or five people, like this little avenger team, and you create a cobranded product together and you launch it and everyone makes a bunch of money, split all the money, 50/50/50/50, that makes more than 100,but you know what Iâm talking about, everyone splits the money, everyone splits the customer list and all the sudden youâve all pulled your efforts, your energy, your talents together and everyone leaves with some cash, and you also leave with the customer list, and thatâs when you start growing really, really rapidly.
When I started I didnât have a customer list, I had a very small one. But I had a couple of skill sets so thatâs why I did tons of these things. Thatâs like, if you guys know any of my old friends like Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, I could list off all the old partners we had back in the day, and thatâs what we did all the time, these little rainmaker projects. We didnât call them that back in the day, but thatâs what it was.
It was just like, we all knew what our skill sets were, and itâs like, letâs come together, letâs make a project. This isnât going to be how we change the world, itâs not going to be something weâre going to scale and grow, but itâs like, itâs going to be a project, we put it together, we launch it, make some money, get some customers, get our name out in the market, and then we step away from it and then we all go back to our own businesses.
Itâs not like, thatâs why itâs funny because a lot of times people are scared of these. Like, âWell, how do we set up the business structure? Whoâs going to be the owner? Whoâs the boss?â No, none of that. This is an in and out project where all the rainmakers come together and you create something amazing for a short period of time, you split the money and you go back home with the money and the customers.
But it gave you a bump in status, a big bump in customer lists, a big bump in cash and then all those things kind of rise and if you do enough of those your status keeps growing and growing and growing, and itâs a really fast easy way to continue to grow. How many of you guys want to do a rainmaker project with Nick right now? Alright, very, very cool.
Alright, and then I got one last, this is number seven. This kind of ties back to dream 100. The last thing I talked about was, and again this is kind of for everyone in the group, is the levels of the dream 100. I remember when I first started this process, I first got the concept and I didnât know it was the dream 100 back then, but I was looking at all the different people that would have been on my dream 100 list. It was Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, all these people that for me were top tier. Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and I was like, oh, and I started trying to figure out how to get in those spots. And the more I tried, it was so hard to get through the gatekeeper, it was impossible to get through all these gatekeepers, these people.
I was like, âMan donât people care about me. Iâm just a young guy trying to figure this stuff out and they wonât even respond to my calls or my emails. I canât even get through, I thought these people really cared.â Now to be on the flip side of that, I didnât realize what life is actually like for that, for people like that. For me, I understand that now at a whole other level. Weâve got a million and a half people on our subscriber list. We have 68000 customers, weâve got coaching programs, got family, got friends. We have to put up barriers to protect yourself or itâs impossible.
I felt, I canât even tell you how bad I feel having Brent this morning, âCan you tell everyone to not do pictures with me.â Itâs not that I donât want to, but do you want me to tell you what actually happens typically? This is why we have to put barriers around ourselves. Hereâs my phone, Iâll be in a room, like Funnel Hacking Live and there will be 3000 people in the room, and Iâm walking through and someoneâs like, âReal quick, real quick, can I get a picture?â Iâm like, âI gotta go.â And theyâre like, âItâll take one second.â And Iâm like, ahh, âOkay, fine, quick.â And theyâre like, âHold on.â And they get their phone out and theyâre like, âUh, uh, okay, uh, alright got it. Crap itâs flipped around. Okay, actually can you hold this, my arms not long enough can you hold it? Actually, hey you come here real quick, can you hold this so we can get a picture? Okay ready, one two three cheese.â And they grab the camera and theyâre off. And for them it took one second. And that person leaves, and guess whatâs behind them? A line of like 500 people.
And then for the next like 8 hours, the first Funnel Hacking Live, was anyone here at the first Funnel Hacking Live? I spent 3 Âœ hours up front doing pictures with everybody and I almost died afterwards. Iâm like, I canâtâŠbut I didnât know how to say no, it was super, super hard.
So I realize now, to protect your sanity, people up there have all sorts of gatekeepers and itâs hard. So the way you get through is not being more annoying, and trying to get through people. The way you get to them is by understanding the levels of that. So I tried a whole bunch of times, and I couldnât get in so I was like, âCrap, screw those guys. They donât like me anyway, they must be jerks, Iâm sure theyâre just avoiding me and Iâm on a blacklistâŠ.â All the thoughts that go through your head.
And at that time, I started looking around me. I started looking around and I was like, âhey, thereâs some really cool people here.â And thatâs when I met, I remember Mike Filsaime, Mike Filsaime at the time had just created a product he launched and he had like a list of, I donât know, maybe 3 or 4 thousand people. And I remember I created my first product, Zipbrander, and I was all scared and Iâm like ,âHey Mike, I created this thing Zipbrander.â And he messaged back, âDude thatâs the coolest thing in the world.â
A couple of things, Mike didnât have a gatekeeper, it was just him. He got my email, he saw it, and he was like, âThis is actually cool.â Iâm like, âCool, do you want to promote it?â and heâs like, âYes, I would love to promote it.â Iâm like, oh my gosh. I had never made a sale online at this point, by the way, other than a couple of little things that fell apart. I never actually made a sale of my own product.
Zipbrander was my very first, my own product that I ever created. So Mike was that cool, he sent an email to his list, his 5000 person list, they came over, I had this little pop up that came to the site and bounced around, back in the day. I had 270 people opt in to my list from Mikeâs email to it, and I think we made like 8 or 10 sales, which wasnât a lot, but 67 thatâs $670, they gave me half, I made $350 on an email and gained 300 people on my list. Iâm like, oh my gosh this is amazing.
And I asked Mike, âWho are the other people you hang out with? I donât know very many people.â And heâs like, âOh dude, you gotta meet this guy, heâs awesome.â And he brought me to someone else, and Iâm like, âOh this is cool. â and Mikeâs like, âDude, I promoted Zipbrander, it was awesome, you should promote it.â And then heâs like, âOh cool.â And he promoted Zipbrander. Iâm like, oh my gosh, I got another 30-40 people on my list and there were a couple more sales.
And then I asked him, âWho do you know?â and there was someone else, and we stared doing this thing and all the sudden there were 8 or 10 of us who were all at this level and we all started masterminding, networking, figuring things out, cross promote each other and what happened, whatâs interesting is that all of our little brands that were small at the time started growing, and they started growing, and they started growing. All the sudden we were at the next tier.
And when we got to the next tier all the sudden all these new people started being aware of us and started answering our calls and doing things, and Mikeâs like, âOh my gosh, I met this guy who used to be untouchable.â And he brought him in and brought them in and all the sudden weâre at the next level. And we started growing again and growing again.
And the next thing we know, four years later I get a phone call from Tony Robbins assistant, theyâre like, âHey Iâm sitting in a room and I got Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, all these guys are sitting in a room with Tony Robbins and he thinks that you guys are the biggest internet nerds in the world, heâs obsessed with it and he wants to know if he can meet you in Salt Lake in like an hour.â
What? Tony Robbins? Iâve emailed him 8000 times, heâs never responded even once, I thought he hated me. Not that he hated me, itâs that he had so many gatekeepers, he had no idea who I was. But eventually you start getting value and you collectively as a level of the dream 100 becomes more and more powerful. Eventually people notice you because you become the bigger people. And each tier gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
So my biggest advice for you and for everybody is understanding that. Yes, itâs good to have these huge dreams and big people, but start looking around. There are so many partnerships to be had just inside this room. How many deals have you done with people in this room so far?
Nick: Quite a few.
Russell: More than one, right.
Nick: Yeah, more than one.
Russell: Start looking around you guys. Donât always look up, up, up and try to get this thing. Look around and realize collectively, man, start doing the crossings because thatâs how everyone starts growing together and there will be a time where Iâll be coming to you guys begging, âCan you please look at my stuff you guys, I have this thing called CLickfunnels. You may have heard of it. Can you please help me promote it?â And thatâs whatâs going to happen, okay.
So the level of the dream 100 is the last thing, just donât discount that. Because so many people are like swinging for the fence and just hoping for this homerun like I was, and itâs funny because I remember eventually people would respond to me, that I was trying for before, and theyâd contact me. And I was like, oh my gosh. I realized, I thought this person hated me, I thought I was on a black list. I was assuming they were getting these emails and like, âoh, I hate this. Russellâs a scammer.â In my head right. They never saw any of them.
Until they saw me, and they reached out to me and the whole dynamic shifted. So realizing that, kind of looking around and start building your dream 100 list, even within this room, within the communities that youâre in, because thereâs power in that. And as you grow collectively, as a group, everyone will grow together, and thatâs the magic. So that was number seven.
So to recap the seven really quick. Number one, tell your story way too much, to the point where youâre so annoyed and so sick and tired of hearing it that everybody comes to you, and then keep telling it even some more.
Number two, in everything youâre doing, energy matters a lot. To the point, even above what you think youâre comfortable with and do that all the time.
Number three, make offers for everything. Hook, story, donât leave them hanging, give them an offer because theyâll go and they will feel more completed afterwards.
Number four, start building a list, it ties back to the first thing. Make an offer, get them to build your list, start growing your list because your list is your actual business.
Number five, integration marketing. Look for other peopleâs marketing channels and how you can weave what you do into those channels, so you can get free traffic from all the people who are doing stuff.
Number five, create rainmaker projects, find really cool things and bring four or five people together and make something amazing. Share the cash, share the customer list, elevate your status, elevate your brand, and itâs really fun to do because you get to know a whole bunch of people.
And Number seven, understanding the levels of the dream 100. Find the people at your level and start growing with them together collectively as you do that, and in a year, two years, three years, five years Tony Robbins will be calling you, asking you to make his video and it will be amazing.
Does that sound good? Awesome.
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A special conversation I had on stage at the Traffic Secrets event with a friend and a student Nic Fitzgerald.
On this episode Russell talks to his childhood friend, Nick Fitzgerald about helping him go from being in a technician position to being in an entrepreneurial position. Here are some of the inspiring thing in this episode:
Find out how Russell found out his childhood friend was in desperate need of help and what he offered to do for him. How Nick was able to make to Funnel Hacking Live via credit card, and then spent $1800 on a program without telling his wife. And why being on the program helped Nick be able to ask a client for $25,000 on a project, when that was his previous yearly income.So listen here to find out how Russell was able to help Nick achieve his entrepreneurial dreams.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. The next two episodes are a really special one. For our Two Comma club X members and our inner circle members I did an event recently, some of you guys heard me talk about it. It was a traffic secrets event, where Iâm getting all the material ready for the book, and start teaching this stuff.
Anyway, it was really, really fun and as I was doing the presentations, the night before when I was doing all the prep work I had this thought. I was like, I want to bring up somebody on stage and itâs somebody who was a friend I grew up with in elementary school, and junior high, and high school, someone who was down on their luck, who was really, really struggling. About a year ago I saw him post something on Facebook and I reached out, and this interview is happening about a year later.
During the process he tells his story about what happened and the transformation and the change thatâs happened by being involved inside our Clickfunnels, Funnel Hacker community. So I wanted to share that with you as part of the event, so this first half is going to be Nick kind of telling his story and itâs going to be the story from the bottom of the barrel where they were, they literally made $25,000 a year for 3 years in a row and then the transformation to this year, theyâll do well over six figures. And thatâs going to be this first podcast.
And the second podcast episode is, Iâm actually going to be doing, I did a live coaching session with him on stage, and I want to share that with you as well because I think thereâs a lot of things for you specifically that you can get from this episode too.
So the next few episodes are going to be sharing this really fun conversation that happened late night at the Traffic Secrets event with my friend Nick Fitzgerald, and if you think that name sounds familiar, I have talked about him before on this podcast. In fact, a little over a year ago I did a podcast episode called being a rainmaker that was a personalized podcast that I sent to Nick specifically to help him with what he was struggling with at the time.
So anyway, I wanted to share this with you because it will take you full circle to show you kind of the progress and the momentum and things that are happening in his life, and I think it will be encouraging for you to hear the story because no matter where you are in your journey right now, if you are struggling, doing well, or if youâre somewhere in between, there are parts of this story that will resonate with you. And in the second episode where I coach Nick I think will help everybody as well. So with that said, letâs jump right in and have some fun. I want to introduce you to my friend Nick Fitzgerald.
Alright so I want to set the tone for the next hour or so of what the game plan is. So I have a first initial question that Iâm curious about with everyone here. Iâm curious, who since they joined the Two Comma Club X program has had some kind of experience with Mr. Nick Fitzgerald? Thatâs powerful, Iâm going to talk about why in a little bit, but very, very cool.
So some of the back story behind this, and then weâre going to introduce him up, and when he comes up I want you guys to go crazy and scream and cheer and clap, because it will be good, and then I want him to sit down so weâll be the same height, which will be good, itâll be fun.
So some of the back story, I actually met Nick the very first time in elementary school, and even in elementary school he was a foot and a half taller than me, which is amazing. He was like 6 ft 2 in like third grade, it was amazing. But we knew each other when we were dorky little kids and going up through elementary school we were both doing our things, and we didnât have a care in the world and everythingâs happening. And as we got older he kept getting taller, I stopped growing.
And then we got into high school and he kept growing and he joined the basketball team. I didnât keep growing so I went downstairs in the basement, literally, at our high school in the basement they call it the rubber room, and itâs this room that smells like, I donât even know, but itâs under the gym. So he would go upstairs and fans would show up and people would cheer for them, and scream at their games. And all the girls would come to the games. And weâd go down in the rubber room by ourselves and cut weight and put on our sweats and lose weight and weâd jump rope and sweat like crazy.
And weâd sit there, and I remember one day after working out for two hours pouring in sweat, I had my plastic gear on and my sweats on top of that, my hoodie and my hoods and we got the wrestling mats, and literally rolled ourselves up in the wrestling mats to keep the heat in, and we laid there and we were so hot. And I could hear the basketball players in the gym up above having so much fun and people cheering for them. And all the girls were there. And I was like, âWhy are we not playing basketball?â It doesnât make any sense.
But during that time, obviously we were in two different kind of worlds, and we didnât really connect that much, and then we left our separate ways. And I didnât hear from him for years and years and years. And then do you guys remember Facebook when it first came out? The first time you got it and you log in and youâre like, âOh my gosh, I can connect with people.â And you start searching the friends you know and then you find their friends and you spend a day and a half connecting with every person youâve ever remembered seeing in your entire life? Do you guys remember that?
So I did that one night, I connected with everybody. Everyone in high school, everyone in junior high, or elementary, everyone in every stage of my life, as many as I could think of. And then I was like, I think thatâs everybody. Okay, Iâve connected with everybody.
And one of those people that night was Nick. And then, but I didnât say hi, I just friend requested and he requested back and Iâm like, cool weâre connected. And then after that I got kind of bored with Facebook for like a year or so. Then a little while later I found out you can buy ads on it and I was like, what, this is amazing. So we started buying ads and everything is happening. And itâs crazy.
And then what happened next, I actually want Nick onstage to tell you this story because I want you to hear it from both his perspective and my perspective, I think itâd be kind of interesting. Yeah, I want him to come up first. So letâs do this real quick. As you guys know Nick has been a super valuable part of this community since he came in. Iâm going to tell the story about how he got here and some of the craziness of how he signed up when he probably shouldnât have and whatâs been happening since then, because I know that you guys have all been part of that journey and been supporting him. How many of you guys are going to his event thatâs happening later this week? He just keeps giving and serving, heâs doing all the right things, heâs telling his story, heâs doing some amazing stuff.
So my plan now is I want to talk about the rest of the story. I want to tell you guys what I told him a year ago and then I want to tell you guys my advice for him moving forward, because I feel like itâs almost in proxy. I wish I could do that with every one of you guys. Just sit down here and coach you. But I feel like heâs at a stage where some of you guys arenât to where heâs at yet and some of you are past that, and some of you guys are right where heâs at, and I feel like the advice that I really want to give him, will help you guys at all different levels. So thatâs kind of the game plan. So with that said, letâs stand up and point our hands together for Mr. Nick Fitzgerald.
Alright, this has some good music. That was like music from high school. Look how tall I am. I feel likeâŠ.okay, so I had him find this post because I wanted to actually share a little piece of it. So this, Iâm going to share a piece of it, I want to step back to where you were at that time in your life. So this was July 7, 2017, so what was that a year and a half ago, ish?
So July 7, 2017 there was a post that said, âLong post disclaimer. I hate posting this, blah, blah, blah.â So at the time my family was about to go on a family vacation. Weâre packing up the bags and everything, and you know how it is, you do a bunch of work and then you stop for a second and your wife and kids are gone and youâre like, pull out the phone, swap through the dream 100 and see whatâs happening.
And somehow this post pops up in my feed and I see it, I see Nick my buddy from 20+ years ago and Iâm reading this thing and my heart sinks for him. Some of the things he says, âI hate posting things like this, but I felt like need to for a while. Being poor stinks. For those friends of mine who are ultra conservative and look down consciously or not, on people like me, I can honestly tell you that Iâm not a lazy free loader who wants something for nothing. Iâm not a deadbeat who wants Obama or whoever to blame now, to buy me a phone. Iâm not a lowlife trying to get the government to pay for my liposuction. Iâm not a druggie who eats steak and lobster for dinner with my food stamps. Iâm a father of four, a husband, someone who lost everything financially, including our home when the time came to have your healthcare in place or to get fined, I went through the process.
âBased on my family size and income, we were referred to the state to apply for those programs. We couldnât get coverage for ourselves to the exchange in other places, we qualified for Medicaid. After the process was complete, the state worker suggested we try to get some other help, some food stamps.â It kind of goes on and on and on and he says, âIn 2016 I made $25000. $25,000 plus our tax returns for the previous year. So a family of 6 living on $25,000 a year is being audited for receiving too much help, too much assistance.â And it kind of goes on and on and on with that.
He says, âIâve never abused drugs or alcohol, Iâve never even tried them. Iâm just a guy trying to live the American dream and provide for his family. Itâs unfortunate that we look down on those who are trying to better our lives, even if it leaves them from receiving help from assistance in place to help them. Look down on me if you want, I donât care. I know the truth. My family is healthy and sheltered and thatâs all that matters. I donât wish these trials on anyone elseâŠâ and it kind of goes on from there.
So I want to take you back to that moment, what was, talk about what you were experiencing and what you were going through during that time.
Nick: I didnât expect this. Iâm a friendly giant, but Iâm a big boob too. Back at that time, I had started what I thought was, I started my entrepreneurial journey. I was working in film full time, working 12, 14, 16 hour days making $200 a day, just killing myself for my family. Going through the process of, Iâd lost my job because I wasnât going to hit my sales, I was a financial advisor, and I wasnât going to hit my sales numbers. So you know, my ticket was stamped.
So I said okay, Iâm going to do my own thing. And in the course of all that, it was time to get your health insurance and those things, and I went through the proper channels, like I felt like I should. And I was referred to the government for the programs, based on the numbers. And as a provider, a father, an athlete competitor, I felt like a failure.
Weâve all, when you have to rely on somebody else , or somebody else tells you, âHey, we donât think you can do this on your own, come over here and weâll take care of you.â Thatâs basically what I was told. So it was hard to accept that and to live with that reality. So we did, and I worked hard and it was a blessing really, to not have to worry about how much health care costs or have some of the things to supplement to feed our family and stuff. So it was great and it was wonderful.
But then I got the email from the state saying, âHey, youâre being audited. Weâre just looking at things and weâre not sure. Youâve been getting too much help.â So at that point Iâm just sitting there frustrated because Iâm working my butt off, just trying to make things happen, become someone involved in the film community in Utah. And I was, and everyone knew me, and I had a reputation, but I still was a nobody in the eyes of the government.
So I went to Facebook to whine, looking for what I wanted, which was a pat on the back, âThere, there Nick, youâre doingâŠwe know youâre a good dude and youâre working hard.â That kind of thing, and I didâŠ
Russell: I was reading the comments last night. âOh youâre doing a good job man. Good luck.â Everyone like babying him about how tough life can be.
Nick: So I got what I wanted, but it still didnât change anything. I still had to submit my last two years of tax returns and all of the pay that Iâd got and everything like that, so they could look at our case number, not Nick, Leisle, Cloe,Ewen, Alek, William. So it was just one of those things.
I got what I wanted, then comes Russell to give me what I needed, which wasâŠ.
Russell: I saw that and Iâm like packing the kids bags and everything and I was like, âah, do I say something?â I donât want to be that guy like, âHey, 20 years agoâŠâ and I was like, ah, I kept feeling this. Finally I was like, âhey man, I know we havenât talked in over 20 yearsâŠâ This was on Facebook messenger, âwe hadnât talked in like 20 years. I saw your post today and it sucks. And I know whatâs wrong, and I can help. But at the same time, I donât want to be that guy and I donât want to step on any toes. I know we havenât talked in 20 years, I have no idea if this is even appropriate. But I know whatâs wrong, I can help you. And no, this is not some cheesy MLM Iâm trying to pitch you on. But if youâre interested in some coaching, I know whatâs wrong.â And I kind of waited and then I started packing the bags again and stuff like that.
Iâm curious of your thoughts initially as you saw that.
Nick: Itâs funny because my phone was kind of blowing up with the comments. So I would hear the little ding and I would check. And then I saw that it was a message from Russell, and we had said like, âHey, whatâs up.â And had a few tiny little small talk conversations, but nothing in depth personal. So I saw that he sent a message, so Iâm like, âSweet.â
So I look at it, and I was half expecting, because I knew he was successful, I didnât know about Clickfunnels per se. I knew he had something going on that was awesome, but I didnât know what it was.
So I was wondering, âI wonder what heâs going to say, what he has to say about things?â But I read it and it was funny because when you said, âI donât want to overstep my bounds. Itâs been a long time, I donât want to step on toes.â Kind of thing, Russell, we all know his athletic accolades and stuff. I was a great basketball player too, I was in the top 200 players in the country my senior year and stuff like that. So Iâve been coachable and played at high levels and been coached by high level guys. So when I read it and he said, âI know whatâs wrong and I can help you.â I was just like, âYes.â
That was my reaction. I just did the little, um, fist pump, letâs do this. So I replied back and I thanked him for reaching out and stuff, and I just said, I think I even said, âIâm coachable. I will accept any guidance.â And things like that. Because up until that point in my life, especially in sports, if a coach showed me something, I would do it the way he did, and I would kick the other dudeâs butt. I didnât care. I played against guys who made millions of dollars in the NBA. I dunked, I posterized on Shawn Marion when he was at UNLV my freshman year of college. I started as a freshman in a division one school in college. So I would take, Iâve always been that kind of, I would get that guidance, that direction, I can put it to work.
So I was just like, âDude, Mr. Miyagi me.â Iâm 8 days older than him, so Iâm like, âyoung grasshopper, yes you can teach me.â That kind of thing. So I welcomed it and I was excited. I had no idea, because again I didnât know what he did. I just knew he had a level of success that I didnât have. And if he was willing to give me some ideas, I was going to hear him out for sure.
Russell: It was fun, because then I messaged him back. Iâm packing the car and Colletteâs like, âWe gotta go, we gotta go.â I was like, ah, so I get the thing out and I was like, âThis is the deal. Iâm driving to Bear Lake, itâs like a six hour drive. Iâm going to give you an assignment and if you do it, then Iâll give you the next piece. But most people never do it, so if you donât thatâs cool and Iâll just know itâs not worth your time. But if itâs really worth your time, do this thing. I need you to go back and listen to my podcast from episode one and listen to as many episodes as possible, and if you do that Iâll make you a customized episode just for you telling you exactly whatâs wrong and how to fix it. But you have to do that first.
âAnd Iâm not telling you this because Iâm on some ego trip, but just trust me. The problem is not your skill set, you have mad skills, youâre good at everything. Itâs all a problem between your ears. If we can shift that, we can shift everything else.â Then I jumped in my car and took off and started driving for six hours. And then the next day, or a day later youâre like, âIâm 14 episodes in.â he was still listening to the crappy oneâs, according to Steven Larsen. The Marketing In Your Car, he was probably thinking, âThis is the worst thing Iâve ever heard, ever.â
But he did it. I said do it, he did it. And he kept doing it and doing it, and so two days into my family vacation I had Norah, you guys all know Norah right. Sheâs the coolest. But she wonât go to bed at night, sheâs a nightmare. Donât let that cute face trick you, sheâs evil. So Iâm like, I canât go to sleep, so finally I was like, Iâm going to plug her in the car and drive around the lake until she falls asleep.
So I plug her in the car, strap her in and I start driving. And Iâm like, this could be a long, long thing. Sheâs just smiling back here. I was like ugh. Iâm like you know what, Iâm going to do my episode for Nick. So I got my phone out, I clicked record and for probably almost an hour, it was an hour. Iâm driving around the lake and I explain to him what I see. Did anyone here listen to that episode? Iâm curious.
Iâm going to map out really quick, the core concept. Because some of you guys may be stuck in this, and the goal of this, what I want to do is I want to map this out, and then whatâs funny is last year at Bear Lake, so a year later we had this thing where I was like, we should do a second round where I do a year later, this is the advice now. And I wrote a whole outline for it and I totally never did it. So Iâm going to go through that outline now, and kind of show him the next phase. So you cool if I show kind of what I talked about?
Nick: For sure.
Russell: Alright, so those who missed the podcast episode, who havenât been binge listening, youâve all failed the test, now you must go back to episode number one, listen to the cheesy jingle and get to episode, I donât know what it was. Okay, Iâve said this before, if you look at any business, any organization, thereâs three core people. The first one is the person at the top who is the entrepreneur.
The cool thing about the entrepreneur is the entrepreneur is the person who makes the most amount of money. Theyâre the head and they get the most amount of money. The problem with the entrepreneur is they also have the most risk, so theyâre most likely to lose everything. Iâve lost everything multiple times because Iâm the guy risking everything. But the nice thing is entrepreneurs that write their own paychecks, thereâs no ceilings. So they can make as much as they want. They can make a million, ten million, a hundred million, they can do whatever they want because thereâs no ceiling. So thatâs the first personality type.
The second personality type over here is what we call the technicians. The technicians are the people who actually do the work. And whatâs funny, if you look at this, people who go to college are the technicians. What do they do, they look down on entrepreneurs, they look down on sales people. âOh youâre in sales. What are you a doctor?â For crying out loud in the night. But they look down on people like us. Because âIâm a doctor. I went to 45 years of school.â
Whatâs interesting, thereâs technicians in all sorts of different spots right. I actually feel bad, I shouldnât say this out loud, but at the airport here I saw one of my friends who is an amazing doctor and him and his wife were leaving on a trip and we were talking and he said, âThis is the first trip my wife and I have been on in 25 years, together by ourselves.â Iâm like, âWhat?â and heâs like, âWell, we had medical school and then we had kids and then we had to pay off medical school and all these things. Now the kids are gone and now we finally have a chance to leave.â I was like, wow. Our whole lives weâve heard that medical school, becoming a doctor is theâŠ..anyway thatâs a rant for another day.
But I was like, thereâs technicians. And whatâs interesting about technicians, they donât have any risk. So thereâs no risk whatsoever, but they do have, thereâs a price ceiling on every single person thatâs a technician, right. And depending on what job you have your price ceiling is different. So doctors, the price ceiling is, I have no idea what doctorâs make, $500 grand a year is like the price ceiling, thatâs amazing but they canât go above that. And different tasks, different roles, different position all have different price ceilings.
But thereâs like, this role as a technician makes this much, and this one makes this much and youâre all kind of these things. I said the problem with you right now, you have these amazing skill sets, but you are stuck as a technician in a role where theyâre capping you out, where the only thing you can make is $25k a year.
Remember I asked you, âWhat have you been doing?â and youâre like, âOh, Iâve been networking, Iâve been learning, Iâve been getting my skills up, getting amazing.â Iâm like, âThatâs amazing, youâre skills are awesome, but your ceiling is $25k a year. No matter how good you get you are stuck because youâre in a technician role right now.â
I said, âyouâve got a couple of options. One is go become an entrepreneur, which is scary because youâve got four kids at home and you donât have money anyway.â I am so eternally grateful that when I started this game, my wife, first off, we didnât have kids yet, my wife was working, we didnât have any money but I didnât have to have any money at that time, and Iâm so grateful I was able to sometimes, I was able to risk things that nowadays is hard. For you to come jump out on your own initially and just be like, âBoom, Iâm an entrepreneur and Iâm selling this stuff.â Thatâs scary right, because youâve got all this risk.
So I was like, thatâs the thing, but itâs going to be really, really hard. I said, âthereâs good news, thereâs one more spot in this ecosystem. And the cool thing about that spot itâs that itâs just like the entrepreneur, thereâs no ceiling, now the third spot over here is what we call the rainmakers. The rainmakers are the people who come into a business and they know how to make it rain. This is the people who know how to bring people into a company. Leads, they bring leads in. They know all this traffic stuff theyâre talking about. These are the people who know how to sell to leads and actually get money out of peoples wallets and put it into the hands of the entrepreneurs.
These people right here, the rainmakers donât have ceilings. In fact, companies who give the rainmaker the ceiling are the stupidest people in the world, because the rainmaker will hit the ceiling and then theyâll stop. If youâre smart and you have a company, and you have rainmakers, people driving traffic, people doing sales, if you have a ceiling they will hit and they will stop. If you get rid of the ceiling and then all the sudden they have as much as they want, they have less risk than the entrepreneur, but they have the ability to make unlimited amount of money.
I said, âYour skill set over here as a technician is worth 25k a year, but if you take your skill set and shift it over here and say, âI come into a company and Iâm a rainmaker. I create videos, I create stories, theyâll sell more products, more things.â Suddenly youâre not worth 25,000, now youâre worth $100,000, youâre worth $500,000. Youâre worth whatever youâre able to do, because thereâs no ceiling anymore.
And that was the point of the podcast. I got done sending it, then I sent it to him and I sent it to my brother to edit it. And I have no idea what you thought about it at that point, because we didnât talk for a while after that. But Iâm curious where you went from there.
Nick: So the first thing, you know, being told I was really only worth $25,000 in the eyes of the people who were hiring me, that was a punch in the gut. That sucked to hear. Thanks man. It was just like, I literally was working 12, 14, 16 hour days, lifting heavy stuff, I did a lot with lighting and camera work, not necessarily the story writing stuff, but you know, for him to put it so perfectly, that I was a technician. I thought going in, when I failed as an advisor and I started my own company, or started doing videos for people, and being so scared to charge somebody $250 for a video, being like, âtheyâre going to say no.â That kind of thing, and now I wouldnât blink my eyes for that.
But you know, itâs one of those things for him to tell it to me that way, just straight forward being like, âYou are, youâre learning great skills and youâre meeting amazing people.â I worked with Oscar winners and Emmy winners and stuff in the movies and shows that I worked on, but again, I was only worth that much, they had a finite amount of money, and I was a small part of it, so I got a small piece.
So listening to all of that, and then hearing the entrepreneur, the risk and stuff. Iâm really tall, Iâm 6â9â if you didnât know. Iâm a sink or swim guy, but because Iâm tall I can reach the bottom of the pool a lot easier. When I jumped in, we had lost, as a financial advisor we had lost our home and we lost all these things. So I was like, I have nothing left to lose. Worst case scenario, and I had never heard that mindset before. We were renting a basement from a family members, our cars were paid off. Worst case scenario is we stayed there and get food stamps and that kind of thing. There was nowhere to go but up from there.
So for me, I was just so excited. Iâm like, I want to be a rainmaker, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I didnât know where to find the people that I could do that for. So I was in this thing where I was still getting lots of calls to work as a technician, but I didnât want to do that anymore. I didnât want to put myself, my body, my family through me being gone and then when Iâm home Iâm just a bump on a log because Iâm so wiped out, all that kind of stuff.
So that was my biggest first thing, the action point for me. I started thinking, okay how do I transition out of this? How do I get myself out and start meeting the right people, the right kinds of clients who do have budgets and things like that, and how do I make it rain for them. Thatâs when I made that shift from working as a technician. I told myself Iâm not going to do it anymore. The last time I technically worked as a technician was about 9 months ago. It was for a friend.
So I made that shift and it was just amazing. Like Russell was talking about earlier, when you start to track it or when itâs part of your mindset, things start to show up and happen. You meet the right people and stuff. So those things just started, just by listening to that one hour long thing, I started changing and then the black box I got, Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets and started going through that as well. And it was just like, you see in the Funnel Hacker TV, that moment where the guy goes, âRAAAAAâ thatâs what happened with me. It was like a whole new world, Aladdin was singing. He was Aladdin and I was Jasmine, with a beard.
Russell: I can show you the world.
Nick: Exactly. But thatâs what really, literally happened with me.
Russell: Thatâs cool. Alright this is like summertime, heâs going through this process now, figuring things, changing things, shifting things, heâs changing his mindset. We go through the summer, we go through Christmas and then last yearâs Funnel Hacking Live, were we in February or March last year? March, and so before Funnel Hacking Live we kind of just touched base every once in a while, seeing how things are going. Heâs like, âThings are going good. Iâm figuring things out.â
And then Funnel Hacking Live was coming, and I remember because weâre sitting there, and I think he messaged me or something, âFunnel Hacking looks awesome I wish I could make it.â I was like, âWhy donât you come?â And youâre like, âI just canât make it yet.â I was like, âHow about this man, I guarantee you if you show up itâll change your life forever. Iâm not going to pay for your flights or your hotel, but if you can figure out how to get there, Iâll give you a free ticket.â And thatâs I said, âif you can come let Melanie know, and thatâs it.â
And I didnât really know much, because you guys know in the middle of Funnel Hacking Live my life is chaos trying to figure out and how to juggle and all that stuff. So the next thing I know at Funnel Hacking Live, weâre sitting there and during the session Iâm looking out and I see Nick standing there in the audience. And I was like, âI have no idea how he got there, but heâs there. Freaking good for him.â And I have no idea, how did you get there? That wasnât probably an easy process for you was it?
Nick: No. Credit cards. It was one of those things, I looked at flights. As soon as we had that conversation, it was funny because I was, I canât remember what was going on, but it was a day or two before I responded back to his invitation. And I was like, Iâd be stupid to say no. I have no idea how Iâm going to get there. I think I even said, âIâll hitch hike if I have to, to get there.â Can you imagine this giant sasquatch on route 66 trying to get to Florida.
But I told my wife about it, and this is where Russell might have this in common. My wife is incredible and super supportive and she let me go. And we didnât have the money in the bank so I said, âIâm going to put this on the credit card, and as soon as I get back Iâm going to go to work and Iâll pay it off. Iâll get a couple clients and it will be fine.â So I booked the hotel, luckily I was able to get somebody who wasnât able to go at the last minute and I got their hotel room, and I got the lfight and I came in and I was in the tornado warnings, like circling the airport for 5 hours, like the rest of you were.
So I got there and I just remember I was just so excited. Walking in the room the very first day, the doors open and you all know what itâs like. I donât have to relive this story. I remember I walked in and the hair on my arms, it was just like {whistling}. It was incredible, just the energy and the feeling. And I was like, t his is so cool. And then the very first speech, I was like that was worth every penny to get here. If I left right now it would have all been worth it. And you all know because youâre sitting here, youâve felt that too.
So that was my, getting there was like, âHoney, I know we donât have the money, we have space on the credit card, and when I get home I swear I will work hard and it will be okay.â And sheâs like, âOkay, go.â So I did.
Russell: So now I want to talk about, not day one, or day two, but on day three at Funnel Hacking Live. How many of you guys remember what happened on day three? Russell sneak attacked all you guys. I was like, if I start going âSecret one, Secret two, Secret threeâ you guys will be like, âHere it is.â Sitting back. I was like, how do I do the Perfect webinar without people knowing itâs the perfect webinar? And Iâm figuring this whole thing out, trying to figure that out. And we built a nice presentation, create an amazing offer for this program you guys are all in.
And as you know, all you guys got excited and ran to the back to sign up and now youâre here. But you told me this personally, I hope youâre willing to share. But I thought it was amazing because you didnât sign up that night. And I would love to hear what happened from then to the next day, and kind of go through that process.
Nick: So this is my first Clickfunnels, I was all new to this whole thing. I was so excited when the 12 month millionaire presentation came up and I was like, âThis is awesome.â Then I see it in the stack and Iâm like, âIâm seeing the wizard, I can see the wizard doing his thing.â And I was just so excited, and then the price. And it was a punch in a gut to me, because I was so, listening to it I was like, âThis is what I need. This is what I want, this is what I need. Itâs going to be amazing.â And then the price came and seriously, the rest of the night I was just likeâŠ.
The rest of the presentation and everything after that I was just kind of zoned out. I just didnât know what to do. Because I knew I needed it so badly and Iâm like, thatâs almost twice what weâre paying in rent right now. You know, it was just like, how am I going to justify this when Iâm on food stamps and Medicaid and all this kind of stuff. You know, âyes, Iâm on that but I dropped this money on a coaching program.â
Russell: âFrom this internet coach.â
Nick: Right. And so Iâm having this mental battle and get back home to my room that night and I didnât go hang out with people. I just was not feeling it. And I remember texting my wife on the walk back to the room. And I took the long way around the pond, just slowly depressedly meandering back to my room. And Iâm texting her and Iâm telling her how amazing it was and what the program would do and all that kind of stuff, and sheâs like, âThat sounds great.â
And Iâm purposely not saying how much itâs going to cost, just to get her excited about it, so I can maybe do a stack with her right. âFor this and thisâŠ.â See if I could try it. I didnât, I failed when it came to doing that. I told her the price and sheâs like, âThatâs a lot of money. How are you going to pay for it.â And Iâm like, âI donât know.â And Iâm like, âThe only thing I can do, because I have to sign up while Iâm here, and pay for it while Iâm here. I can put it on the credit card and then we will figure it out.â
So we talked a lot and I talked to my dad and it was the same thing. He was like, âMan, thatâs a lot.â Just the scarcity mindset that a lot of us have with our family members and support system who arenât, donât think, who arenât the crazy ones.
So I went to bed and I got emotional, and I slept so so bad. Just didnât sleep well that whole night. And again, I talked to my wife again the next morning, and I just, we just said, âIt would be awesome. But I canât do it, so Iâm just going to work hard and figure something out and then if it ever opens up again, then Iâll be in a position to do it.â So I left my room that morning with that in my mind. I made the mistake of keeping my wallet in my pocket though, because Iâm here.
I again made the long walk back and kind of gave myself a pep talk like, âDonât worry about that kind of stuff. Just more value out of it, meet more people.â So thatâs when I left my room that morning, thatâs where my mind was.
Russell: What happened next?
Nick: I walked into the room and Kevin Hansen, who I had, itâs funny, he does a lot of editing for Clickfunnels, and he and I had actually met independent of Clickfunnels before. It was one of those things like, âOh you do, oh my gosh.â and it was like 2 months after weâd met. So I was talking to him, just chitchatting, and I just had right then in my mind, it was like, âWalk over to the table and sign up. If you donât do it now, youâre never going to do it.â And it was just one of those things, because Iâd given myself that speech, that whole five minute walk across the property.
So I finished up talking with him and I just said, âIâll be right back.â And I walked straight over to the table, got out the credit card, wrote it all down, and Iâm like, I donât even know what my limit is, so I hope whenever they run this that it goes through. I donât know whatâs going to happen. So I did and I got that little silver ribbon that we all got. And again, {whistling} chills. Like I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. I put it on my little lanyard thing and I was just like, I couldnât believe it. The adrenaline and all that stuff of, âIâm doing it. And my wife is going to kill me when I get back home.â
So thatâs, then I went and got my seat and I was just floating, you know. I was so amped, I could have âSteven Larsenedâ it and screamed over the noise of everybody else and it would have been very, you would have heard it. So thatâs what I did that morning. I was like, âNot going to do it, not going to do it, not going to do it.â I walked in, 60 seconds done. You have my money.
Russell: So Iâm curious, when did you tell your wife? This is like a marriage counseling session, huh?
Nick: yeah, do you have a couch I can lay down on?
Russell: A big couch.
Nick: yeah, really. So I got home and I didnât tell her, at all. I didnât. I said, the clock is ticking. I have 30 days until that hits, or 20 days until the credit card statement comes and sheâs like, âWait, why is there an extra $2000 bucks on here?â So I just, I said, Iâve got some time because my wife, sheâs 5â3â, sheâs dainty, little petite lady, but sheâs not scary I guess. But this is the first time I was really scared to tell her something in our marriage.
So I just said, Iâm just going to hit the road hard and see what I can come up with to cover at least the $1800 and the hotel, for what I racked up at Funnel Hacking Live, and then that will get me another 30 days to figure something out. So I went and I never told her until the credit card statement came and she saw it. Sheâs like, âWhatâs this?â
But what happened before that, I donât know, do you have something after that or do you want me to go to the next part? Okay, so me going to work and being like, âI gotta find it.â and itâs funny that night at Funnel Hacking Live, I went on Facebook and I created some half thought through offer where it was like, âHey if I can get like 5 people locally where Iâm at to do a monthly low number where I create a couple of videos for a monthly retainer, that will cover it and I can figure it. But nobody nibbled on it.
So I got home and I started just trying to figure stuff out. And I had met another lady who had a company and she uses Clickfunnels for her course. And it was funny, I talked to her before I went to Funnel Hacking Live, and we were talking and she was like, âDo you know Clickfunnels?â And I was like, âThatâs so crazy. I do.â Because Iâd never met anybody else that had. So I got home and I shot a little video with her, it was a test to do some modules for her course and she loved it and it was great. So we were talking about, she had like 20 videos she wanted to do and we were talking about budget, and I just said, âyou know what, for that much, for that many videos and all this kind of stuff, itâs going to be $25,000.â And she didnât even blink. Sheâs like, âPerfect, thatâs great.â
Thank you, you guys. Youâre going to make me cry. Thank you. And that was like maybe two weeks after I got home that that happened. And I left her house and I tried my hardest not to do a jump heel click going down her driveway, out to my car, and I got around the corner and I messaged Russell like, âdude, youâll never guess. I just closed my first 5 figure deal and this is what it wasâŠâ and he was like, âThatâs so cool.â You know.
But it was the whole plata o plomo thing, I would never have the guts to ask for something like that, I know that I should and that my skills and what I can do are worth that and more, and itâs been proven to me again and again since then, but to ask the first time, that first time you have a big ask and youâre just throwing yourself out there, and if she would have said noâŠNow what am I going to do? Because I had actually done another pitch where I did like a webinar pitch where I had a stack and slides and stuff because it was for a Chamber of Commerce, and I wanted to charge them 2500 a month to do like 4 videos a year.
And I did the whole thing like, âIf you do it, itâs $2500 a month, or if you do it all right now itâs thisâŠâ that whole you know, and they passed on it. I was like, ugh. So it was just one of those things where being around yâall, that was my first experience being around entrepreneurs, really. I have friends who have had businesses, but I felt weird for wanting to create my own thing or being selfish because I have four kids. Like why donât you go get a real job? All those conversations that you hear and have with yourself, especially when things arenât going great.
But it was like okay, I have to get it done or I have to drop out. And I just, even in that short amount of time I received so much value from the people I was beginning to meet, and then as the content started coming out I was like, âThereâs no way I could live without this after having a taste of it.â So that was my, I had to get it done and it worked out.
Russell: Amazing, I love that story. So coo. Alright, so since then, how many of you guys have watched hisâŠ.are you daily or almost daily Facebook Lives?
Nick: Pretty much, almost daily. Iâll miss someâŠ
Russell: How many of you guys have watched his daily Facebook lives, heâs doing what weâre saying right. Heâs doing it. Heâs doing it. I see it, I see it coming in my feed. It pops in my feed over and over. Heâs doing what weâre talking about. Heâs attracting people, heâs telling stories. All the stuff weâre talking about, heâs been doing it. But part of it, he had to have that emotion, that plata o plomo moment and then he hit it and itâs just like, heâs been running and running and running and running. And itâs been so insanely fun to watch the progress and the growth.
Some of you guys know he put out an event thatâs coming up this weekend and sold out in 5 seconds. Heâs like, âI sold out, should I make it bigger?â and Iâm like, âNo people should have responded to you faster, itâs their fault. Sell it out because next time it will be easier to sell it out again and easier to sell out again.â But he did it by giving tons of value. Telling stories, telling stories, telling stories, providing more value to you guys, to other entrepreneurs, other people in the community and people are noticing. All the stuff we talked about today, heâs doing it. Consistently, consistently, consistently doing it.
That was so cool. I donât even know where to go from here. Alright I know where to go from here. Before I move into this, was it scary?
Nick: All of it scary? Well, this is what, back to my competitive days, I donât care who, Iâd played against the best players in the country at high levels. And I didnât care if you were going to the NBA, being recruited by Duke, once we got into the lines I didnât care who you were, I was going to make you look silly. I would hold, you wouldnât score a point on me, or I would just like out work you and if you wanted to get anywhere I was in your face the whole time.
And so this was a whole different game for me. I remember Myron talking about in his speech at Funnel Hacking Live, you have to stay in the game long enough to learn the game, and I was new to this game. Like brand new, less than 12 months when I went to Funnel Hacking Live. And it was terrifying because, not necessarily because I didnât think I could do it, I was just worried when, how long it would take. Like am I going to go and just spin my wheels and itâs going to be 15 years, 2099 and Iâm wheeling up across to get my reward from him in his wheelchair, just like, âHey buddy.â You know, that kind of thing.
I just didnât know how to make it happen quick. That kind of stuff. So I was definitely scared, not necessarily of failing, because I had failed before, I was just scared how long it was going to take.
Russell: one of the best moments for me was this summer, him and his family were driving home from, I canât remember where, they were driving through Boise, and heâs like, âCan we swing by and say hi? My kids want to meet you, my wife wants to meet you.â Thatâs always scary when you havenât met someoneâs wife or kids and youâre like, what if they hate me.
And I remember I started thinking, oh my gosh. He spent all his money coming out here, and then he bought the thing, she might legitimately want to kill me. I have no idea. I was a little bit nervous. And I came and met them and the kids, it was super cool. I remember the coolest thing, your wife just looked at me and she said, âThank you.â And I was like, how cool is that? Just the coolest thing. Thank you for convincing, persuading, whatever the things are to do this thing.
I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we feel the guilt or the nervousness of, âShould I sell somebody something? Is it right, is it wrong?â You have to understand when youâre doing it, itâs not a selfish thing for you. Itâs like, how do I get this person to take the action they need to do. Because most people wonât do it until they make an investment. Itâs just human nature. Theyâll keep dinking around and dinking around, whatever it is until they have a commitment, until they make that covenant, like Myron talked about earlier, people donât change.
So in any aspect of life, you want someone to make a change, thereâs got to be something that causes enough pain to cause the change, which is why we have the program. We could have priced the program really, really cheap but I was like, âNo we wonât.â We legitimately wanted to make a plata o plomo moment for everybody. Youâll notice, when the program signup, not everybody who signed up is here today. Some people fell away, some of them left, things happen and I totally understand, but I wanted to make it painful enough that we get people to move.
And there are people in this room, Iâve joked about, Nick probably shouldnât have bought that. If he would have asked I wouldâve been like, âNo dude, donât. What are you thinking? Why would you do that?â as a friend this is weird, but Iâm so grateful. Are you grateful you did?
Nick: Absolutely.
Russell: Whereâs Marie Larsen, is she still in here? I talked about this in the podcast. She was in the same situation, she should not have signed up for it, itâs insane. I saw this text she sent Steven, sheâs like, how much did you have in your bank account when you signed up for it? $70 in the bank account, $1800 a month bill she signed up for. And then it started happening and she was freaking out how itâs going, if you guys havenât listened to the podcast, Lean In, yet I told the whole story. But it got nervous month one, then month two happened and sheâs like, âOh my gosh, I need to leave. I canât afford this.â And sheâs talking with Steven and Stevenâs like, âWell, you could leave and walk away, or you could lean in.â so she decided, âOkay, Iâm going to lean in.â So she leaned in, and Iâve watched as her business over the last 3, 4, 5, 6 months is growing and itâs growing and itâs growing because she leaned in. Tough times will come, every single time it comes, but those who lean in are the ones who make it through that, and who grow and who build huge businesses.
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Some almost-incoherent thoughts on my way home from trick-or-treating.
On todayâs episode Russell talks Halloween, and about trying to look at everybody in the world the way he looks at his youngest daughter, Norah. Here are some of the insightful thing you will hear on this episode:
Find out why Halloween is not longer Russellâs favorite holiday. Hear why watching Norah laugh caused Russell to change his perspective on how he sees other pepole. And find out why Liz Benney was nervous to sign on to have Russell coach her when she found out he was a religious person.Listen here to find out why Russell believes we need to serve everyone at the highest level possible without casting judgment on them first.
---Transcript---
Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a late night Marketing Secrets podcast. Itâs Halloween, I just got done trick or treating, and I just dropped off Blake, who has been filming behind the scenes of everything this last week, at the hotel. Iâm driving home and I wanted to share with you guys some thoughts.
Alright everybody, this is probably less of a marketing thing, and more of a life thing. I hope you donât mind if I share this, but it was on my mind a little bit as Iâve been having so much fun with my kids.
So we had Halloween tonight, which itâs crazy. I used to love Halloween, it used to be my favorite holiday by far. I think Iâve recently transitioned from Halloween being my favorite, to now the 4th of July. Just because the fireworks, the age of my kids now, fireworks I think are more fun.
But last year, I didnât know that was going to happen. Last year my kids started wrestling, so wrestling practice happens until 5:30 every night, we get home at 6:00. So last Halloween, thatâs what was happening. We get home from wrestling practice, race home, and in my head Iâm like, Iâm going to wear my new Batman costume, which if you guys havenât seen my Batman costume, itâs amazing, but it takes like an hour at least to put it on.
So Iâm racing home and Iâm like, I donât have time to put my Batman costume on, and Iâm kind of bummed because I wanted to wear that, I was so excited for it. I get home and the kids are eating and everything is crazy and all the sudden the doorbell rings, and Iâm like, âOh trick or treaters.â So we run to the door and itâs my daughterâs friend, and sheâs all, âCan Ellie come trick or treating with me?â
And I donât even know how to explain what happened, it broke my heart. And I didnât want to, I was like, âNo, this is my holiday.â And my wifeâs like, âNo, this is the kidsâ holiday.â And I was like, âNo, no.â and it broke my heart, so we let her go with her friends. And then the boys wanted to go with their friends, so I dropped one of our twins off. So it ended up being one of the twins, Norah who fell asleep in the car as we were dropping the other kids off, and then Aiden.
And we went out and I remember it was the most depressing day of my life, Iâm not going to lie. I took them trick or treating and I fell asleep in the car, because me and Norah were sleeping the car while Collette took the other oneâs out, and I was just like, so bummed because this is my holiday and my kids stole it from me.
But alas, I finally grew up and realized that itâs their holiday. So this year I was more prepared for it, I was like this is going to be good. They went with their friends, we were okay with that. I took Norah out, it was really fun. She is still a super cute age, so at least I got one baby who still loves me. All the rest of them are out with their friends.
Anyway, so thatâs what just ended tonight, and Iâm not going to lie, Iâm beat up and worn out. And my beautiful wife is such a good sport. We had Blake come and film the whole thing and sheâs not a big fan of being on camera all the time, but come one weâre doing vlogs, and we need to document us dressing up. And she even got a costume and everything just for it. So sheâs amazing to put up with my, with me.
I canât imagine being married to me. Can you imagine being married to me, that would be so annoying. But I love her and Iâm grateful for her. So for any of the spouses of the crazy entrepreneurs, thank you for putting up with your spouse because I know itâs not, it canât be easy. I canât even imagine. So Iâm grateful for my wife and Iâm grateful for all the wives and the spouses. I always tell people you can only be as successful as your spouse will allow you to be, and Colletteâs an amazing sport for doing all that even though I know she doesnât want to.
But thatâs not what I want to talk about today. I actually want to talk about yesterday. So yesterdayâŠ..
Hey, sorry to jump in the middle of the podcast episode, but Iâm at home and I actually finished recording this whole episode and then I got home and the rest of it just didnât make that much sense. And then I tried to rerecord it and it didnât make much sense. So Iâm jumping on again, a third time, to try and finish out this episode because itâs something really powerful and profound that I wanted to share, but for some reason I canât explain it. Itâs one of those things where you experience something and then you try to explain it and then it doesnât really make sense. It was like you had a moment.
So Iâm just going to share with you the moment and then the insights, and then again, it may not make any sense to you but hopefully it will give you guys a little glimpse of what I experienced yesterday.
We went to this school carnival at the kids middle school, and we get there and all the kids run off and theyâre doing a million things with all their friends, and then me, Collette and my little Norah had a chance to go and hang out. And then we went out to the field and she wanted to go run across the field and I was like, âOkay, letâs go.â So we start running, and we ran all the way to the goal posts, and we ran back and as weâre running, sheâs just laughing hysterically, and sheâs so cute. And I look over and I just see her face and I see her laughing. Itâs just one of those moments when time just froze.
I was like, this is such a cool, itâs a cool experience to see your little daughter laughing and happy. And the experience Iâve been trying to explain to you guys and Iâm just struggling to get out, as I was watching her laugh for a split second, I had this really cool realization, where I realized once again that everybody in this world was once a kid, just like Norah. Even the people that drive us crazy, people I love, people I admire, people I look up to, all of them not that long ago were kids just like Norah, running around without a care in the world.
On the same side, people I love and admire and look up to, but also the other side, people that drive me nuts, people I donât agree with, people that I donât agree with them personally, or I might not agree with their political beliefs or religious beliefs or whatever. But the gift I was given, and I donât know how to explain this to you guys, but as I was looking at her I realized everyone once was a child like her.
And it made me just look at people differently for a little bit. I started realizing that the people that drive me nuts, theyâre just little kids, they were a little kid not that long ago and they may believe different than me, but itâs because of their life experience or because of the things that they experienced. It could be their parents screwed them up. Or it could be the group of people they got into, or maybe Iâm the screwed up one. I donât know. But it just made me have a different level of love and appreciation for everyone in that moment.
And I wanted to just kind of share with that with you guys because I think so often we give people such a hard time, people that believe differently than us. I know the political seasons are probably coming again soon. I donât track it close, but man, when the last political stuff happened it was like war every single day and everyone was hating each other.
Itâs like, oh my gosh step back and realize the reason why someone is on the left or someone is on the right, they didnât care about that 10, 15, 20 years ago, or however long that they were little kids like Norah, but because of how they grew up, or because of their parents or situation, all sorts of things, thatâs why they believe that way. You may feel that theyâre wrong, or I may feel theyâre wrong, but at the same time it doesnât mean theyâre bad.
Same thing with religious beliefs, same thing with all aspects of our lives. I donât know, after seeing her in my mind I was like, I want to be more tolerant of people. I want to be more loving with people. I want to respect them for who they are because theyâre all children of God, just like little Norah here running around.
Then I started thinking about our callings. Everyone who is listening to this podcast, if youâve been following me for more than 5 minutes you know that I donât believe business is just about selling stuff. I believe that we are called to these callings, what weâre doing are actual callings. Like me and our team building Clickfunnels and training entrepreneurs isnât just because weâre trying to make money, we feel like thereâs a higher calling.
In fact, at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, where Andrew Warner interviewed me for two hours on the Clickfunnels startup story, he asked that. Heâs like, âDo you guys believe that this is inspired by God?â and I was like, âOh yeah, 100%. No doubt in the slightest. We definitely feel like this is a spiritual thing for us. Weâre doing our best to serve the people we have at the highest level that weâre able to.â Weâre by far not perfect, we screw up so many times, and we donât always give the best service all the time. You know, sometimes we have customers that leave angry or upset or whatever, but man we try hard. If you guys knew how hard I try at every angle every direction.
And I just think about this, as weâre serving we shouldnât care about what people believe, you know what I mean. We should serve selflessly, serve without worrying about that. Itâs interesting, and I hope she doesnât mind me sharing this, but one of my close friends and someone I admire and look up to so much is Liz Benney, some of you guys know Liz.
It was interesting when I first met her and she joined our coaching program, this is probably 3 or 4 years ago now, and she told me this. So Liz and sheâs got a beautiful wife Christy, and you guys know that Iâm a Mormon, Iâm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and she told me when she was applying through our thing, thereâs a video of me telling the story about how God changed my life, and I talked about God in this video. And she told me she was scared to apply because sheâs like, âWhat if, Russell talked about God, what if he wonât want to work with me, or what if he looks down on me, or what if whatever?â
And man, who knows there may be a time in my life, I donât know, who knows? Hopefully not. I hope I never have been or would be that way, but you know she came in and I was like, I donât care what youâŠthatâs not my purpose. My job is to serve in the best of my capacity anybody whoâs willing to listen to my voice. And I shouldnât be pushing people aside because of sexual orientation or because of political beliefs or religious beliefs or anything. Thatâs not my choice.
I have so many things that I struggle with, I should not be the one trying to fix peopleâs things. Thatâs not up to me. My job is, hey Russell, this is your sphere of influence, this is the platform youâve been given. Everyone who comes to you, serve them at your highest level regardless of any of those things.
And I almost feel like if I was to try to cast judgment or doubt or whatever on people for whatever the thing is theyâre struggling with, man, I think about all the things I struggle with. What if the mentors and the people I was seeking help from didnât want to help me because Iâm a Mormon, or because I believe this way, or because Iâm struggling with this addiction, or this problem, or this thing. I donât think we have the rights or we shouldnât be the ones who are doing any of those things because weâre not perfect ourselves right. So why should be the ones coaching everybody on all these things? I feel like weâre given these platforms to serve anyone and everyone who comes to us, at our highest level, no matter what weâre able to do.
And I think yesterday in that moment with Norah, as I was looking at her and seeing her laugh, and I just got this weird love for everybody where I was like, oh my gosh, I just need toâŠany prejudices, anything like that that I have in my mind, I just need to get rid of them and look at everybody through this lens of oh my gosh, this is someone who is just trying to figure this out. Figure out this whole game the same way I am. And I canât cast my preconceived notions or judgments upon them, itâs not my job, not my role. My role is to serve each person.
I look back at Liz, I had a chance, it was funâŠI hadnât heard from her for a while and she Voxed me yesterday and was just telling me about everything sheâs doing, the people sheâs serving, how much success sheâs had and how many peopleâs lives sheâs changing. And it was such a special moment. Iâm so grateful that first off, she was willing to apply even though I know she had fear. She told me there was fear of that.
Iâm grateful that people on my team didnât cast any judgment. Iâm grateful I didnât cast judgment. Iâm grateful that we looked at her as we look at anybody and just said, look weâre going to do our best to serve her at our highest level because sheâs special, sheâs got a gift, sheâs got the ability to affect other peopleâs lives. And I think that if we start looking at everyone around us that way, it will help us to not judge them because of their political beliefs or judge them because of their religious beliefs or judge them because they believe something or do something different than we do.
Everyoneâs got their own demons inside themselves and until, whatâs the parable? If you read the bible thereâs a parable, you know whoever is perfect among you, cast the first stone. And Iâm like, Iâm not perfect so Iâm not casting any stones. Because I donât want those things coming back at me. Instead itâs in your sphere of influence, serve the best you can.
So anyway, I donât know if that makes any sense or if that helps at all. I hope it does. I just know for me, I had this really rare, amazing glimpse seeing my daughter and in this instant I saw everybody as her. And I was like man, everyone here 10 years ago, 15, 20, 30 however many years back was just like Norah is now. And I love Norah so much and I was like, I need to love everybody that much because if I do I can truly have an impact on them.
And if Iâm not careful when I look at people through this other lens, itâs going to hold myself back. Anyway, it was really a reminder for me just to understand y mantle, my calling, my job, my profession, my career, whatever you want to call it, that Iâm called to serve all people and anyone who can hear my voice and is willing to come towards me, Iâm going to do my best to serve them at the highest level I can, regardless of everything else.
So Iâm grateful for everyone, grateful for you guys who are listening to this, Iâm grateful also for your willingness to go out and get your message out there. Itâs a scary thing, and as you will find, two things you will find as you start putting your message out thereâŠItâs funny, Steven Larsen shared one of them yesterday at the telethon, heâs like, âAs soon as you go hit publish, the second you go out and start doing your thing, instantly every character flaw you have is going to smack you in the face. Thatâs the best thing about business, as soon as you start putting yourself out there, all your character flaws come like, boom, right in front of your face.â Itâs scary.
Thatâs number one. Number two then, the critics come fast, and they want to silence you as quick as they can. But man, Iâm grateful for you guys who are willing to step up every single day in spite of those things, in spite of the fact that starting a business will bring every character flaw you have to the surface and youâre going to be super, hyper aware of it. Things that werenât that big a deal before suddenly become a big deal because you are the leader, you are the person whoâs putting yourself out there. And number two, the critics when they come, it can be scary. I will get critics from this podcast.
I will get messages from people who are like, âI canât believe you talked about God in the podcast. I came to listen to marketing, notâŠâ I will get that, I guarantee it, I get it every single time. But itâs like, it doesnât matter. This is my message and Iâm sharing it, and Iâm sharing it and Iâm grateful for you guys that are willing to do those same things as well, because itâs scary, itâs rare, but man when you do it, itâs why youâre here.
So know that, keep being bold, keep being brave, keep putting your message out there. Get rid of any judgments or things you have out there because thatâs not your role. Your role is to serve at your highest level to all people who will hear your voice. And if you do that, you serve selflessly, youâll be able to have the impact you really want.
So there you go. For all those who I offended today, Iâm so sorry. For those who heard my message and understand it, thank you and I hope that youâre able to look at people the same way I had a chance to see people yesterday when I was looking at Norah. So thanks everybody, appreciate you all. Have a great night and we will talk to you again tomorrow.
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Step #1 in the process of writing the new Traffic Secrets book.
On this episode Russell talks about the process he does while writing his books. Also find out when the launch date will be for his latest book, Traffic Secrets. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear on todayâs episode:
Why Russell started over while writing the Dotcom Secrets book. Find out why doing an event after deleting the first draft of the Expert Secrets book helped him come up with a better framework. And find out how he is beginning to write the Traffic Secrets book, and when youâll be able to get your hands on a copy of it.So listen here to find out what Russell goes through to write a book, and why you should consider buying the previous two books again when Traffic Secrets launches.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I am pumped to be here with you guys today. Iâm going to tell you guys a little bit about the event that happened last weekend.
Alright everybody, so last night we just got back from the Traffic Secrets event. Yes, you heard me right, the Traffic Secrets event. What? Which is really, really exciting. And now Iâm actually heading to the dentist. Iâve got a little window. Iâm definitely late for the dentist, but thatâs what he gets for being a dentist. Just kidding, I like my dentist a lot, heâs a cool guy. But I gotta get my teeth drilled or something, so itâs one of those things.
But I just want to tell you guys about last weekend and why we did it and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Those who know my journey, know my story over the last few years, know that a long, long, long time ago, like ten years ago I had an idea I wanted to write a book. But I feel like you have to earn a book. Itâs not something thatâs just given to you, you have to earn it. So I bought the domain name dotcomsecrets.com, because I was like I want to write a book called DotCom Secrets dot com, because Iâm going to teach people the secrets of the dot com thing.
Anyway, looking back now I probably would have named it something different. But that was the name, and I wanted it to be a book. And then it sat there for like a decade where it wasnât a book, it was just in my head.
And then one day I was out to dinner with my buddy Chad Wolner, and we were at Carlâs Jr eating while we were watching our kids play on the little playground thing. And he said something very profound to me, he said, âDo you know the difference between you and Tony Robbins and Brendan Burchard?â Iâm like, âNo what?â and heâs like, âI feel like your contentâs better, youâre helping more people, youâre doing all this cool stuff, but they seem more legitimate than you because theyâve written more books.â I was like, âWhat?â At first I wanted to curse him out and then next Iâm like, âCrap.â If heâs thinking that, one of my close friends, what is the rest of the world thinking?
Alright, if I want to legitimize what Iâm doing I need to write a book. And this is about the same time that weâre working on Clickfunnels. So these two projects are happening simultaneously, because thatâs the smart way to do it, write a book and launch a software company at the exact same time.
So I start the journey, and we start writing the book, and I spent a long, long, long time and I wrote the whole first draft of the book, and after I wrote it I looked at it and I was like, âIâm not proud of it.â And I told this at the Traffic Secrets event, one of the life lessons I got from my dad. I remember one time he asked me to go clean the car, and this is, I was probably about 8 or 9 years old, and I went and cleaned the car and came back, âDad, okay itâs clean. Can you come out and look at it so I can go out and play?â and heâs like, âWell, are you proud of it?â Iâm like, âI donât know.â And heâs like, âWell, if youâre proud of it, then youâre done.â
And Iâm like, âCrap.â And Iâm like, âIâm probably not proud of it.â So I went back down to the car and I started cleaning and re-cleaned the whole thing, and this time I made sure I was proud of it. I went back up and Iâm like, âOkay dad, the carâs done.â And he said the same thing, âAre you proud of it.â And I said, âYeah.â And he said, âOkay, then youâre done.â He didnât even come look at it.
Life lesson right there. Boom. So fast forward now, twenty years later and Iâm reading the manuscript of the book that Iâm about to go send to the publisher, and I was like, âIâm not proud of this.â So I decided to just get rid of it. So I got rid of the script and I thought, you know, the problem was, all the stuff was in there and I donât know, it didnât make sense, wasnât in the right order. There was like this chicken and the egg concept, what comes first? They have to know this before they know this, and all these things.
So I thought the best way to do this was to actually teach a live event because then I can explain it and see it in peopleâs eyes, see what makes sense, and see what things are out of context and stuff. So my little coaching program at the time was called Dotcom Secrets Ignite, some of you may have been in that. I said, âAlright guys, everyone come to Boise, we are going to teach this event called Dotcom Secrets.â
And I ended up getting about a hundred people to show up to Boise and for three days I taught the concept of the book. And whatâs interesting, as I was teaching it I was like, âOh crap, you need context. This doesnât make sense. I need to explain this.â So I taught the whole thing, and after I got done I rearranged the outline and changed everything around until it was like, oh, hereâs the book. Then I started over and rewrote the book and then boom, we have Dotcom Secrets, which Iâm very proud of.
So that was the first book and then I was like, âI will never write a book again.â There was so much pain associated. Of all the projects Iâd ever done, that was the most amount of work and the least amount of money made from a project. Because books donât make you a ton of money. They make you good money if you do it right, if you do it through a funnel the way we do. But it wasnât insane.
Iâm used to funnels where you launch it and they do a few million dollars out the gate. This one, you know, sold a ton of books, but it wasnât short term, huge monetary success. But looking back at it now, five years later, itâs been huge monetary success. Because it was the indoctrination piece that got people to understand funnels, which then created the desire and the need for Clickfunnels.
Anyway, so I get the book done, and Iâm never going to write a book again. And then like a year later Iâm at this mastermind meeting, which is actually happening again this weekend, itâs kind of funny. It was Joe Polishes mastermind meeting and Iâm going and I get invited to this dinner the night before with a couple of people. So Iâm at the dinner, and sitting across from me at the dinner is this guy named Dean Graziosi, some of you guys know Dean.
I had been a fan of Deanâs for a long time, weâd met once or twice. He was the dude who was on infomercials for twenty years. I used to watch his infomercials and study him, and write the scripts out because I was a marketing nerd. And just loved what he was doing.
So Iâm sitting across from him and weâre talking and having all these conversations. And in the middle of this conversation about something completely different, I had this realization that was like, âYou need to write a book and itâs going to be called Expert Secrets and somehow Deanâs going to help you. Iâm not sure if itâs going to be an infomercial or something. But you need to write this book.â
Iâm like, oh crap. I donât want to write a book. But I had bought that domain two or three years earlier, so I remember I went to bed that night and Dave Woodward was staying with me and I was just like, âIâm writing another book.â And heâs like, âWhat?â and we start talking about it and heâs freaking out, weâre freaking out. And so that started the journey.
So guess what I did? I wrote an entire copy of the book, I was so excited. That was this time of the year, right now weâre in October. So then fast forward to the next summer, so it means I had spent six months writing this book. So that summer, I think it was June or July, I was at my family reunion and I was supposed to be going through the final edits of the draft to be able to send to my publisher. So Iâm reading the drafts and as Iâm reading it, Iâm like two or three pages in and I had the same realization, âIâm not proud of this.â
And I was like, no, I spent too much time on this. So I was like, itâs not right. And back then I was snapchatting, so I got on Snapchat Live and I said, âeveryone, Iâve been writing this book for the last six or seven months, and Iâm not proud of it.â So I highlighted the entire book, live on Snapchat, then deleted it and resaved the file, so it was gone, gone. It was the only copy I had. And I was like, âItâs gone.â
And everyone was freaking out. I got people messaging me like, âNo, Russell. I will pay you a thousand dollars to read that manuscript.â And Iâm like, âNo, itâs gone forever. Iâm not proud of it. I donât want it leaking out to the interwebs and people would be like, âoh thatâs Russellâs book.â
So I decided after that, I was like, âI need to do an event like last time.â So I called up my now, mini-inner circle at the time and said, âyou guys, weâre doing an event in Boise next month. Boom, come to this event.â And I didnât know where I was going to go, but I just knew that the event had a schedule, therefore I must figure out how to teach this concept in a really short period of time.
And at the same time I was going to Kenya, so weâre flying to Kenya. On the flight to Kenya, on the gravel roads in Kenya and on the flight home from Kenya I am reading, mapping out, studying, planning, plotting, scheming, building out the framework for this book. And if youâve read my books you know I doodle out every concept. So Iâm doodling every single concept, putting them in chronological order, trying to get it the best I can.
I land in Boise, coming home from Kenya, our flight got delayed by 36 hours, so it was a day late getting home, and my event was the next day. So I land, go to bed, wake up in the morning and I go to this event to teach the concepts again. I teach the Expert Secrets concepts over two days, and whatâs fun, the same thing. Iâm teaching stuff and some things make total sense to people, other things they get stuck and I have to reteach it, and redo the framework and Iâm tryingâŠ.
I remember one concept that I thought was going to take 10-15 minutes to explain, we ended up spending 3 hours on it in the group because we figure it out and how to make it simple and simplify it.
Anyway, when that was done, then I took the outline and retweaked it and boom, I went back to writing and I wrote the Expert Secrets book. So thereâs pass number two.
So this time, and again I was like, âI will never write a book. I forgot how painful writing books are, and this was horrible. Iâll never write a book.â And literally, in the middle of the Expert Secrets launch, day two or day three, I get a message from John Reese who said, âHey, would you be interested in buying Traffic Secrets from me?â
And I was like, oh my gosh. This could be the trilogy. I could get a hardbound trilogy box set. I was like, this would be the greatest thing in the world. Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets, and then my podcast, which you see is Marketing Secrets, and Marketing Secrets is like the daily whatâs happening in the world right now, thoughts on top of the conscious mind. And the other books are like the foundational cornerstones, that are the evergreen pieces that never change.
And I was just like, âI have to buy this.â And emotionally I bought it, which means you spend a lot more money than you should. But I knew that that was book number three.
So now fast forward, weâre a year and a half past the Expert Secrets launching. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies, itâs changed a lot of peopleâs lives and itâs helped peopleâs funnels grow, which is really, really good. And now Iâm sitting here and trying to figure out this third book. And I was like, âshould I start writing?â and Iâm like, âNo, I must do an event first.â
So I called up all my Inner Circle and Two Comma Club X members and said, âYou know what, Iâm going to offer something I wasnât doing before and weâre doing an event and itâs going to be amazing.â So the next thing we know, now weâre inâŠ.
Sorry my car is super loud, and Iâm super late for the dentist.
So next thing we know, Iâm in Arizona and for two day weâre teaching the Traffic Secrets book. And it was fun, it was the same concept. Monday I came in and started doodling it out, had the framework, the doodles the things. I spent Monday, Tuesday and all day Wednesday doodling, sketching, putting together a process, putting together a framework, and then Thursday morning stepped onstage and started teaching the Traffic Secrets book.
And I taught it Thursday and taught it Friday and yeah, it turned out good. And now I know what shifts and changes and things I need to move around. And now the writing process begins, but it was really, really cool.
So I wanted to share with you guys because that is my process. I know a lot of you guys are struggling, how do you teach content? How do you write books? How do you blah, blah, blah? And for me itâs all aobut like, first off I basically gotta write an outline, hereâs an outline of what Iâm going to create. Number two is I build the framework, for me the frameworks are these doodles. So I doodle out hereâs the framework of what Iâm trying to teach, the conceptual thing.
And then for me now, what Iâve found, the shortcut is get a bunch of people in a room and teach it. And if you teach it, itâs cool because people sitting in a room donât have context. So itâs like if you explain something and theyâre like, âI have no idea what youâre talking about, youâre like, âOh my gosh, I need to explain that earlier in the book or itâs not going to make sense.â So thatâs kind of how I do my process.
So Iâm going to do another episode in the near future about frameworks, because Steven Larsen and I were talking about, heâs like, âThe thing youâre the best at is building out frameworks. Youâre like the framework king. Everyone needs to become framework kings because when you have the framework itâs easy to teach off. But how do you actually build the framework?â
You know my process has been going back twenty, forty, fifty years in the past, learning from the best direct response marketers of all time, figuring out what the frameworks are, bringing them to modern day, and then creating frameworks now all of us can go and use in our world, in our businesses, and things like that.
So anyway, itâs just kind of interesting, so I wanted to share that with you guys and hopefully give you some ideas. For those who are stressed out, âRussell can write a book because heâs Russell.â Itâs like, no Russell struggles writing books more than anybody. So what he does is this process and how it works.
Anyway, I hope that helps. With that said, you guys, Iâm almost to the dentist. Iâm going to bounce. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you guys are getting excited for the third book. I have to have to the publisher by May 1st, weâre also re publishing Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets. Iâm going to be adding about a hundred pages to each book, and weâre republishing them as hardbound books and itâs going to come when we launch next September, I think itâs my launch date. Theyâre going to come in like a box set, which is the coolest thing ever. Itâs like the Star Wars trilogy, only cooler. Or Lord of the Rings trilogy, but even cooler. Itâs the Secrets trilogy.
Alright you guys, be sure to get prepared and excited and ready to buy this when itâs ready because youâre going to love it. Itâs going to be amazing, I promise you Iâm killing myself to make sure the books are great for you guys. Appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything and weâll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.
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On todayâs episode we get to hear the final portion of Russellâs presentation at Dream 100 Con. Here are some of the awesome things in this final piece:
Hear as Russell goes into detail on how to dream 100 several different platform choices. Find out why you need to pick just one platform to obsess over at first, instead of trying to do all of them. And Find out how Brian Dean at Backlinko.com does SEO using the dream 100 as well, even though thatâs not what he calls it.So listen here to have everything you need to know about dream 100 from the final episode dedicated to Russellâs presentation at Dana Derricks Dream 100 Con.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the third and final part of my presentation at Dream 100 Con. I hope youâve been enjoying so far. If youâre just jumping in right now, go back and listen to episode one and two, this is all part of 90 minute presentation I gave at Dana Derricks Dream 100 Con where I was going into the Dream 100 and how it works inside of your business. It is the foundation for all traffic. Itâs the foundation for how we grow and how we scale companies. Itâs the foundation for everything.
And it also happens to be the first two chapters of the new Traffic Secrets book. I hope you guys are getting some anticipation and excitement for the book that will be coming out next year. Itâs going to go deep into this stuff, but this is a really good foundation to help you guys understand how the Dream 100 works, and how it fits in context with the other platforms and ad networks, and everything like that. Without any further ado, Iâm going to jump into the third part of this presentation from Dana Derricksâ Dream 100 Con. I hope you enjoy it, and Iâll see you guys after the intro.
Alright, so now that you kind of have that context, I want to talk about, I want to go into these channels here and talk about growing these different channels.
Each channel, when you start going through these you have to understand each channel is a little bit different, the way that they all work. So the first one is Facebook, weâll talk about that.
So Facebook for me is closest to like a talk show. Itâs interesting, when you look at when new movies come outâŠin fact, itâs going to be fun, as we go through all these I want you guys thinking about this. All of us see these things every single day, but if you start seeing whatâs happening in the real world and see how it correlates with what weâre doing today, it should get you really, really excited.
So when the Expert Secrets book was coming out weâre trying to figure out, how do we launch this thing? How do we get it out there to the whole world? And one night I was watching late night TV, I canât remember what show it was or whatever, I canât remember what actor. But basically there was a movie coming out and the actor was on the show, letâs say itâs Ben Affleck. So Ben Affleck was on Jimmy Kimmel talking about the movie, they show a little clip of it, and then boom. Then Ben Affleck went to the Today Show and then Good Morning America, and this does this circuit and hits all the different talk shows talking about the movie and then that Friday the film goes live and they sell a ton of tickets.
So what does Hollywood do? They do the same thing. They go and find a distribution channel, they get this person in front of all of it, and they do two things, number one, they work their way in. They get Ben Affleck, or whoever the celebrity is in the movie, to get on the show and actually talk about the show, so they work their way in. But they also go and buy their way in, okay. During the break thereâs all sorts of commercials for the show as well. So theyâre buying their way in, theyâre working their way in, in front of core audiences. They know weâre going to buy the movie to get all the hype and buzz. And then they go and people show up to the movie and hopefully itâs a big blockbuster.
So Iâm watching this and I see this whole thing happen, I watch the movie blow up in sales. And Iâm like, gosh, I wish I could get on all these shows. I would love to be on the Today Show and Good Morning America and all these things, but unfortunately traditional media thinks Iâm a big internet nerd and that Iâm just trying to sell stuff and they donât like people like me. At least thatâs the story in my head, itâs probably not true. But thatâs my belief right. So Iâm like, I canât get on these shows, thatâs frustrating.
Then I was like, wait a minute. Facebook is similar to talk shows. People have built these huge distribution channels, what if I went and just did what Ben Affleck just did, but I do it on everyoneâs Facebook channels. So the first step we did, me and Dave sat down freaking out, Steven was there at the time too. We sat down and said, âLetâs build a Dream 100 of everyone on Facebook whoâs got big huge Facebook following.â
We sat down and built a huge dream 100 justâŠ.actually not true. This is a mistake I made that I want to teach you guys through too. We built our initial dream 100 and the first time it was like everybody and then the goal was to go do talk shows on all these peopleâs Facebook channels. What was interesting is that, we had some people who had huge email lists, and we did Facebook lives on their Facebook platform, and they got like 4 people to show up and it was a huge waste of time.
One thing I want you to understand, this is like a really simple, but really powerful concept, people who listen to podcasts, they listen to podcasts. People who read emails, read emails. People who read blogs, read blogs. People who watch things on Facebook, watch things on Facebook. People kind of pick their platforms. Iâm curious, just in this room alone, how many of you guys get the majority of your media through YouTube? How many of you guys get the majority of your media reading blogs or through like medium.com? How many get the majority of your media through podcasts, thatâs what you like to consume? How many get the majority of your media through Facebook Lives?
Itâs really fascinating. So what we found, I was trying to this dream 100 strategy with someone with a big email list, but they had no people on Facebook, it was a huge waste of my time. So for you, if you come back down, itâs really figuring that out. Like, âIâm just going to do the Dream 100 on this platform because this is the platform where these people live. If Iâm going to get people on Facebook to follow me on Facebook, thatâs where theyâre all going to be at.
So again, we came back here with Facebook, we did our own Dream 100, built out a huge Dream 100 of everyone who had a big Facebook following and started calling them up and said, âHey can Russell come on your Facebook page and do an interview with you?â It was like a virtual book tour. We had a ton of people say yes, which was really cool.
So I was on all these different peopleâs channels doing Facebook Lives, âHey this is Russell.â And I got interviewed by Tony Robbins, by Grant Cardone, by a bunch of you guys here in this room, we did a ton of them. I remember we were doing like 10 a day for like two weeks, it was really exhausting. But we did the whole circuit of that. So I worked my way into all of these different shows.
The second thing we did, and this was kind of a cool, unique strategy. We got agreements from all the people doing Facebook Lives, for me to actually go into their ads account and buy ads. So then I started buying my way in.
So Tony Robbins gave us access to their ad account, where I could plug in, and John on my team could actually take our interview and boost it. Thatâs how we got 3.2 million people to see the interview with Tony, because we were buying ads and growing it up. So I both worked my way in, and I bought my way in to grow that thing. I did the same thing with Grant Cardone, and every single personâs audience.
And if you look at that effect from that whole thing, we sold tens of thousands of copies of the book, then my Facebook channel, because Iâm being interviewed by Tony, by all these people, so in the thing you see my head and his head, my channel grew by over a hundred thousand subscribers during that time. So my channel started growing, my channel started getting bigger.
So for each of these, Iâm going to kind of go through some of the strategy behind each of these, but I want you guys to understand, most of you arenât going to go and build a channel on all of these. I would pick just one right now. If youâre trying to do podcasting and Facebook lives and blogging and instaâŠ.all these things, itâs going to be like super diluted and this is going to be really hard for you guys to do it.
So pick like, and I would recommend whatever platform youâre the most obsessed with is the one you should plug into. If you love listening to podcasts all day, you should be a podcaster, because youâre going to understand that medium so much better. If you love Facebook Lives, you should be doing Facebook lives. Initially at least, pick the one medium that you like the best and start focusing on that. As you start growing you can pick the second one or the third one, but if you triple down on one, itâs going to be way better for you, I promise you that.
So Iâm going to go through the core ones here and then I want you guys to kind of think through it for yourself what you want to do. Okay, now each, in fact let me come back to the first image. For each of these different platforms, my goal again is the same thing from right here. Iâm building my own podcast show, Iâm building my own FAcebook following, Iâm building my own instagram. Pick the platform you want to focus on, but just pick one right now. Then the question, the thought is, how do I buy my way in, how do I earn my way into that one.
So if itâs Facebook Live, I build my Dream 100, okay can I get these people to interview me on their page? Thatâs going to build my platform, if not can I buy ads to their people, thatâs going to build my platform? Can I buy my way in? Can I work my way in? Or can I do both?
If Iâm doing a podcast, same thing. In fact, how many of you guys have ever listened to the Art of the Charm podcast? The Art of the Charm Podcast. It was one of the top podcasts in all of iTunes and the dude who started it, his name was Jordan Harvenger, itâs interesting because for some reason him and his business partners got in a fight or something and he left that podcast and then he started his new podcast called the Jordan Harvenger show, and Iâd never listened to that other podcast, but all the sudden I started hearing him. All my favorite podcasts I was listening to, he was popping up on the first one, and the second one and the third one. And everybody is interviewing this guy.
Iâm like, âIâm so confused.â And on every one of them theyâre like, âhow did you build the biggest podcast out there, number one or two on all of iTunes?â and he said, âWell, we launched a show and then I went to every other podcaster and I did interviews with them, and then my call to action was if you like me, go listen to the Jordan Harvenger show. And whatâs interesting is people who listen podcasts listen to podcasts. So I leveraged all the podcasts in my dream 100 listeners to go and fuel and build up my podcasts.â
If you go listen, thatâs all heâs doing. Interview after interview, after interview, just building these things up. You could do the same thing now, find out all the other big podcasts and buy ads to build a platform, but all heâs doing is try to build his platform for round two. So look at somebody who built one of the biggest podcasts in the world, how he builds his second one is the same thing we talked about. Build your platform and come back and earn your way in, work your way in, or buy your way in, or both.
So whatever platform youâre picking, thatâs kind of the process. So let me come back to here. So thatâs the talk show. So again, if youâre going to do Facebook, youâre like, âNumber one, Iâm going to focus and double, triple down and build a huge Facebook following, thatâs my goal.â Cool, so you build your page, come back and say okay, âIâm going to work my way in, Iâm going to buy my way in. Iâm going to Dream 100 all my people, who from these people can I work my way in? Who can IJ buy my way in?â and thatâs how you start growing up the channel.
Alright, number two direct mail and email. So old school, if you think of the old school method of this, and you can learn a lot looking at the old school as youâre looking at whatâs new. So many of you guys obsessively study direct mail? Me and Dana probably, a couple of people. So I donât know, I still love the old guys the best. When Dana was joking about me and him getting in bidding wars on EBay, thatâs actually a true thing.
Every Sunday night I sit on my bed in EBay and I have like 12 searches that are always preloaded, oneâs Dan Kennedy, oneâs Gary Halbert, all the old school people, Iâm searching for the new thing to pop up and I buy everything. Itâs really fun because I love the old stuff. Itâs my favorite because thereâs so much you can learn that relates back to what weâre doing today in our world.
So direct mail is just like talk shows, if you look how Hollywood does the talk show circuits, it gives us the model of what we should be doing. The same thing is true with direct mail. So you look at direct mail back in the day, this is how the whole thing worked. Initially with direct mail, what you would do, this is you and direct mail is similar to the dream 100, there are lists out there.
If you look at the history of direct mail, initially what people would do is they would go and just try to mail everybody right. They would try to get the phone book out, and just get a whole bunch of names and send them out stuff. How many think that is efficient or effective or anything? Itâs really bad.
In fact, itâs funny when I was first learning about direct mail when I was 12 I remember them talking about this whole concept and it was similar to email where basically theyâre like, âI get a list of 100 thousand people, you mail them out a letter and 3% of people respond, this is how the money works, and you make a bunch of money.â So as a 12 year old kid I got all excited.
So I wrote a sales letter on blue paper because thatâs all we had in the printer, my parents printer. For my birthday I asked for stamps, Iâm such a nerd, so my parents gave me 36 stamps because that was the equivalent of what they were willing to spend on my birthday present. I took my 36 stamps, I wrote out a one page sales letter on the blue paper, because thatâs all we had, then I folded it in half because I couldnât afford envelopes, I put a sticker on it and I hand wrote out 36 addresses. And I didnât know where to get a list, so I literally got my phone book and I opened it up and I was like, âThat guys getting a letter.â And I wrote his name in, I flipped it over, âThat guys getting a letter.â And I found 36 people randomly from the phone book in Salt Lake City, Utah and I took those letters and I mailed them.
And I was just like, âOh my gosh, this is going to be huge. If 1% buyâŠâ Iâd do the math and I was so excited. My sample size was 36 and I mailed these letters out and nothing happened. Not a single person responded, and it was really heartbreaking. But it was really hard to read, black ink on blue is really hard to read. And I was like, âI wish my parents had white paper.â But for some reason they didnât. Who knows?
So that was traditional, when direct mail first started, people just tried to mail the phone book. And thereâs only one campaign in the history of the world that ever actually worked with the phone book, and it was a campaign that Gary Halbert did called the Coat of Arms Letter. Who has ever heard this story before? Ah, the old school stories are the best.
So I actually had a chance to meet Gary Halbert, I interviewed him once before he passed away. But he is one of the most amazing people in our industry ever. In fact, if you go to the garyhalberletter.com you can still see all of his old newsletters that heâs published for the last decade before he passed away. Theyâre all there and you can read them. And just reading them, youâll learn more about marketing than you will almost any other way.
So the Gary Halbert letter, anyway, as Iâm studying Garyâs stuff he tells this story about the Coat of Arms, it was actually an interview with him and my first mentor, Mark Joyner and heâs telling this story. So what he did is he tried a whole bunch of different things and he found this family crest, like a coat of arms thing, and it cost him like 30 cents to like photo copy it and like put it out to people. What he did is like, âThis has got peopleâs names on it, I could actually use the phone book.â
So he took all the Johnsonâs in the phone book and mailed out this one page sales letter, have you read the letter? Itâs so good. Anyway, itâs like a super personal like, âHey, this is Gary or whatever, I have the same last name as you and I found the family coat of arms, itâs really cool. Check it out. I actually got a whole bunch of them printed for myself and my family and stuff. I saw that you have the same last name, youâre also Johnson, Iâm Johnson. If you want I could send it to you for like $5. Just send me cash in the envelope and Iâll send you out your own coat of arms.â
And whatâs interesting, I wonât go too deep in this, but he found with the bigger names like Johnson or Smith it didnât work, but with the smaller names like Brunson or Derricks, where itâs a more unique name, it killed it. And he was literally getting the phone book, ripping them out, a dudeâs typing in all this stuff, and mail those out. Theyâd write the letter for the Derricks family, or the Brunson family.
Whatâs funny, this is the coolest part of the story. I wish he was here to tell it. His dad at the time was kind of like most of our parents. I remember when I first got started in this business I was making like a quarter of a million bucks a year and my mom was like, because I was still in school at the time, and sheâs like, âWell Russell, when you get done with school whatâs your job going to be?â Iâm like, âMom, this is my job.â And sheâs like, âNo, no, no when youâre done with that, what are you going to do when you want to grow up.â Iâm like, âMom, this is a legit thing, this is real.â
And itâs funny, if any of you guys know David Frye, David Frye is my second uncle or something like that, heâs also in our industry. I found out years later that he was doing the same thing I was doing. So I called my mom like, âuncle David, heâs doing what Iâm doing.â And sheâs like, âOh, well he does really well. Okay, you can do that.â And that legitimized what we do because somebody else she knew was doing it.
But Gary had the same thing with his dad where his dad was like, âWhen are you going to get a real job? When are you going to do this thing?â So Gary, what he told his dad, heâs like, âDad, I want you to put on a nice shirt and tie and Iâm going to pick you up tomorrow because I want to show you something.â And his dad is like, âWhy?â heâs like, âJust please dress up nice, Iâm going to take you out.â So he goes and picks up his dad the next morning, and he drives over to the bank, and they walk into the bank and thereâs like the bank tellers there and stuff, and then thereâs this stairway.
Heâs like, âCome here dad.â His dad is like, âWhat are you doing?â and heâs like, âCome over here.â Heâs like, âWe canât go up there, thatâs just for employees.â And heâs like, âNo, come here dad.â So he takes this thing, and they walk up the stairs and go on the second level of the bank, and they walk around the bank and thereâs like 60 full time people there, 60 people who are opening up envelopes and are pulling out 5 one dollar bills, putting them in a bank bag and cashing them. Boom, 60 full time people.
And he tells his dad, âthis is the people of the bank who work to put our cash into the bank full time.â And heâs like, âThose are the sales for the month?â âThese are the sales for today.â That letter at its peak was getting like 10,000+ responses a day of people sending in $5 a time. And they had full time people just doing that, counting the cash. And his dad was like, âOkay, you can keep doing this.â It legitimized it for his father.
So thatâs kind of what direct mail is. For most people, the phone book concept does not work. Having a phone book doesnât work, but for that oneâŠ.thereâs a picture of a phone book, I donât know. Okay, that doesnât work, but if you look at the progression, what happened then, people started here, they were testing all sorts of stuff. And what happened is people started getting buyers, and they started building buyer lists.
So this person over here, this dude would be like, âHey, I donât have a phone book but Iâve got this list right here. These are a whole bunch of people on my list, letâs say thereâs 30,000 people that have bought something from me, so you can mail the phone book of like a billion people and cross your fingers and hope or if youâre selling something similar, I sold 30,000 people garden hoses, if you have something that someone who bought the garden hoses would want, you can rent this list.â
So people come and they rent this list and they would mail it out. And then somebody else over here would have a list that was based on a business opportunity. And this guy would have a list based on health and weight loss. And soon people would build up huge directories, like hereâs all the different lists that are out there. Have you ever heard of the SRDS, itâs this huge directory of every list known to man that people actually rent it. And in every market you can find here are a hundred or a thousand people that have buyer lists of people.
So the first phase was like the phone book list, the second phase became buyer lists, then the third phase, people kept saying buyer lists are good, sometimes theyâre better and sometimes theyâre worse, and these buyer list people would be like, âwell, hereâs all my buyer lists in the last 10 years.â And in there youâve got tons of people who have moved and all sorts of stuff.
So they came up with this algorithm that figured out how to get the best possible people on the list. So the algorithm is this, RFM, any direct response nerds know what RFM stands for? I know Dave knows, anybody else? Recency, how recent have they bought something? Somebody who bought something yesterday is more valuable than somebody who bought something three years ago. So recency.
The second one is frequency. How often did they buy? How many of you guys are hyper active buyers? How many of you guys have bought more than one thing from me about funnels? Guess what, youâre more likely to keep buying from me. âBut Russell, I already bought everything on funnels.â No, it doesnât matter. Youâre obsessed. Youâre obsessive compulsive like me, you buy the thing and then the next thing and next thing and you canât stop. Thatâs better. I want people who buy frequently, thatâs a better buyer.
So if they bought recently theyâre a better buyer, if they bought frequently theyâre a better buyer, and whatâs the M stand for? Monetary value. How much they spent? The dude who gave me $30,000 is worth more than the guy who gave me free plus shipping.
So you start doing that, say, âI want to rent your list of 30,000 people, but I only want people who have bought in the last 30 days and bought at least 2 things from you and spent over $1000.â And now you get the cream of the crop, the gold and thatâs who you would go out and you would mail from the list.
So thatâs kind of how the old school worked. Other cool things we learned from the old school as well, if you would go and letâs say I read this dudeâs list, I get these people and if I would just send a letter to them randomly it would do good, but what would do better is the invention of this thing called the lift letter.
So the lift letter is a one page paper from the person they know. They know, letâs say this is Lady Boss and they know Kaelin, so there would be a one page letter from Kaelin and itâd be like, âHey, I just met Russell, heâs got this really cool weight loss program that works really, really good for dads. So you are one of my Lady Boss women and you want your husband to be a little skinnier, you should get Russellâs program, itâs amazingâŠ..â a one page lift letter that would be on top of it, and then underneath the lift letter would be my entire sales letter selling my program.
So we learned this, having lift letters is better. So how does that correlate to us today? Well it correlates today, understanding that if Iâm going after someone with email, I want to find people who have email lists that are good. People that have, that are growing lists, recency, frequency, monetary value. I tell you what, if I can do a JV partnership with somebody who their potential buyers, all their customers have spent $1000 with them or $5000 with them, Iâm going to spend more time on that dream 100 person because I know that their list is worth way more.
If I know, man, this guy just did a product launch, heâs got $5000 new buyers, oh my gosh, that buyer list is hot. When we used to be in the product launch game, weâd launch a product and weâd sell 10,000 copies of it and for the next like 60 days our list was hot. Anything we promoted they would buy, because they were recent.
So itâs like, youâre finding partnerships, looking for people who actually have lists that are these things. A lot of people who like, when we launched the Expert Secrets book, they had done really good on the Dotcom Secrets book launch, I was all excited for them to promote and sell and guess what? These people hadnât added anyone to their list in like 3 years, and they didnât email them very often, and they did horrible on the launch, the second one because they werenât always doing these things.
So when Iâm looking for JV partners Iâm looking for people who have recency, frequency, and monetary value inside their list. Thatâs a much more valuable partner for me than someone who isnât. I also look at this, the lift letter right. The reason why JVâs do so good, if you get the Dream 100 and be like, âDude, Dana wrote this book, itâs insane. Itâs 400 bucks, it doesnât make any sense, but this book is amazing. If you come on this webinar with me, heâs going to explain the whole thing, itâs going to be awesome.â Thatâs going to be way better than me running a cold Facebook ad to Danaâs audience.
So if I can get him to do the lift letter, him to endorse it, promote it before they come on, everything goes up. Thatâs why Dana when he did his Facebook ads made zero dollars in sales on his webinar. Did the same thing with the JV partner who did a lift letter and warmed him, $260,000 in sales. Thatâs the difference.
So we learned so many good things from direct mail. Email is the same thing. The second phase in this for you guys, you need to go and sit down and be like, âwho are the emailers in my business?â Because people who read emails, people who open and click on emails are people who open and click on emails. Iâm going to find the emailers, Iâm going to build a dream 100 list and then Iâm going to do one or two things.
Iâm going to work my way in or Iâm going to buy my way in. If I work my way in it means Iâm going to try to dream 100 them, get them to promote my stuff as an affiliate, and they say no or whatever, I can see if I can buy my way in. Iâm going to go and see if I can buy an ad in their newsletter, if I can pay them up front. This weekend in my secret illuminati meeting, I was hanging out with the guy that owns Tapping Point Solution, do any of you guys knowâŠ.I probably shouldnât tell the members of the illuminati I might get killed. Alex, NickâŠdo you guys know them at all?
So they have a company called Tapping Point Solution which is like this really cool thing, but what they do when they do dream 100 stuff is they have, their entire business is based on affiliates promoting their stuff, but they donât pay affiliates commissions at all. What they do is they pay affiliates $1.50 for every single click that they get, no matter what. So theyâre able to go to the affiliates, and theyâre not necessarily working their way in, âHey, letâs split the money 50/50.â Itâs like, âOkay, how many clicks can you send? Iâll give you this much per click. You guys in?â and theyâre like, âsure.â And thatâs how they do it. Theyâre buying their way into every single one of their dream 100 list.
So thereâs different ways to structure this as you start learning about this. The reason why Iâm kind of showing you guys this in detail on each platform is because one of the biggest things I want you to understand is I want you understand the concepts are the same for all of these. Itâs picking the platform, building my channel, doing the dream 100, working my way in, buying my way to grow my platform.
And itâs going to be similar on every one of these, and if you understand that, this is what makes your business bulletproof. Because someday Facebook is going to get squashed, or email might get banned. I had a bunch of friends who made a ton of money back when fax blasts were real, you could rent a fax list and you could queue it up and youâd have your sales letter printing on like 35,000 peopleâs stuff that night. And then the FTC came in and made Fax Blasting illegal and that dried up. So email could be illegal tomorrow, we have no idea.
Blogs could like, who knows, things could be shut down, but if you understand these concepts it doesnât matter. As new platforms come out, if you understand, âHey I wanna go big in Twitter, or Twitch, or Pinterest, or whatever it is.â The same process, the same concepts are the same.
So you build your channel, find the dream 100, work my way in, buy my way in, boom thatâs it, direct mail. Number three radio podcasts, same thing I talked about. If you want to build a podcast channel, thatâs it. Build the channel, build the platform, then you go dream 100, go to the iTunes directory, go to Stitcher, go to all the big directories, search your phrases, figure out who your people are, and go start dream 100ing them. Or go back in time, maybe if I come here to my customer journey, my best ones if I go sales funnel radio, everyone on Stevenâs podcast probably wants sales funnels. So thatâs an easy one to do.
But if I can go backwards in time in the podcast directory and be like, âOkay well, thereâs only like 3 funnel podcast, who else do I go?â I gotta go backward s in the customer journey. Whoâs got a podcast on business growth? Whoâs got a podcast to chiropractors? Whoâs got a podcast on anyone else who may potentially be a customer going backwards. So donât just do the obvious of, âRussellâs thereâs only three people who have a funnel podcast.â Okay, thatâs right here, now go backwards in the timeline. Who else needs a podcast. Go warmer to the traffic, then go to the colder traffic and go back and forth. But you should be able to get at least a hundred people from any podcast directory for what youâre in.
So donât tell me, âThereâ sonly 3 people.â Itâs because youâre being lazy. You gotta go backwards in time and think, hot traffic, warm traffic, all the way to cold. So thatâs podcasting, the same thing.
YouTube is like a sitcom. How many of you guys watch TV? Dave and I were talking about this last night. So YouTube is a little different beast right. Itâs not likeâŠI can buy my way in really easy, I can find hereâs all of Tony Robbins videos and I can buy ads.
I can go and find infusion Soft, they can be my Dream 100. How many of you guys have ever watched an Infusion Soft Tutorial on YouTube? What happens right before that? Right before the Infusion Soft Tutorial pops up is me being like, âAre you trying to figure out how to use Infusion Soft? It is confusing software, but guess what thereâs this really cool tool called Clickfunnels, so before you watch this tutorial Iâm going to show you something thatâs way simpler than the crap youâre trying to figure out, click down below.â Itâs really fun. Same thing with Lead Pages and Hubspot and Unbounce and all my competitors.
So theyâre my dream 100 in YouTube because I want to pop in front of everyone in their tutorial videos and explain to them why the software theyâre using is the devil and why I am their savior. So itâs really, really fun.
So I dream 100 my competitors there, but how do I work my way in on a YouTube channel? How do people do it through sitcoms? How do they do it through different TV shows? Well think about it, how many of you guys have ever seen a show, they call them a crossover show, where two different casts of different shows will be on a show together? Why do they do that? Hmmm, why would they do that? Maybe this showâs got a big following and this showâs got a big following, theyâre all a bunch of attractive characters. People over here on ER love the ER staff, and over here theyâre like the Simpsons and like the Simpsonâs staff, whatever it is, they do a crossover show where somehow the characters connect.
Then the people of this show see this, people love the show and all the sudden they cross pollinate, and now both channels get bigger. Dave was pulling this morning a bunch of different shows that did that. The Flash and Super Girl did a crossover show so that both audiences find out about the other shows. Fresh Prince and The Jeffersonâs did it. Simpsons and 24, Law and Order and Homicide. Dozens and dozens of shows. This is how they cross pollinate TV shows.
So for you, how do you do that? You dream 100 the crap out of YouTube and find out who are all the people you eventually would love to have their audiences, and then you do crossover shows. You do some kind of video together and you do the crossover.
Now again, initially obviously I would love to find someone with a billion person YouTube following and do a crossover show, theyâre probably not going to do it. So the only way a crossover show is going to work where youâve got similar platforms. So if youâve got 10,000 people on your YouTube, Iâm going to Dream 100 everyone in my market thatâs got 10,000 people , weâre going to do a crossover show, Iâm going to get a bunch of their people, theyâll get a bunch of my people and now my show grows to 15,000. Then Iâm going to go and say, âWhoâs my next thing?â and do a crossover show over there and boom, keep doing that. And keep ascending myself up the dream 100 until eventually you got a hundred thousand, and then a million and you can keep growing from there.
So doing videos together is how you do the crossover show. Same thing comes true with Instagram. Instagram happens, I dream 100 it. I can go buy swipe ups on the people that are on my dream 100. I can buy ads from the people on my dream 100, then I can also do partnerships with them. Like yesterday I was in, or two days ago I was in Jackson hole in a helicopter, and how many of you guys know who Dave Hollis is? Dave and his wife are amazing, and sheâs got like a billion followers, heâs got less but growing fast.
And he was in the helicopter and he was like, âHey Iâm in the helicopter back here with Russell Brunson!â And then he tagged me @Russellbrunson and I got a whole slew of thousand plus people from his following that then followed me. Just like that. Right now when Steven Larsen said, {inaudible}, I was filming him and I tagged Steven Larsen and gets whatâs going to happen? Heâs going to get a whole crap-ton of my people who are going to come over to his thing. Iâm doing little mini crossover shows on Instagram. I did a whole bunch with Dana, like 3 or 4 with Dana.
So invite people to go do cool things with you, then theyâll tag you and all the sudden I guarantee you will wake up with a whole bunch of new instagram followers if you even know how to log in to Instagram. Yeah, you donât even know. I bet theyâre there. It happened to Todd at Funnel Hacking Live. Guess what? I tagged Todd in something, he had like 3 followers, he woke up the next morning with like 700 followers and heâs like, âI should probably do some instagram now.â
So youâre finding cool people and hanging out with them, that are already doing that, and then very quickly people will start sucking, and youâre doing that same kind of thing. So Iâm working my way in and Iâm buying my way in. In fact, all you guys should Instagram me right now and tag me, you have my permission. You need me to dance or something? Whatever you want to do, tag the crap out of me, because I want all your people to follow me as well.
So Iâm working my way in, Iâm buying my way in and Iâm working my channel. Same thing happens with blogs. In fact, how many of you guys want to know how SEO works? In like 2 minutes? SEO. How many of you are like, âI wish I could be number one in Google for my term.â Dream 100 is actually how you do SEO as well, which is fascinating. No one ever believes me until I tell them this, then I show them and theyâre like, âWhat?â Boom, mind blown.
The dude who I think is the best SEO coach right now, a guy named Brian Dean at Backlinko.com And if you look at Brianâs strategy it is literally dream 100. So this is what he does, he goes into the Google, and he figures out, âMan, it would be awesome to be ranked forâŠ.â He types in a phrase, âsales funnels.â And he clicks search, boom, and itâs like, âDude number one, lady number two, person number three.â And hereâs the top ten right.
Heâs like, âThat would be my dream spot. I want to be number one.â And heâs like, âWho is the dude that is number one.â So he clicks on this thing and goes over to this page, and itâs like, âhereâs the dude whoâs number one for Sales Funnels.â And heâs like, âThereâs an article, that would be awesome if that was mine instead.â So thereâs a couple of things you could do. Thereâs a couple levels of dream 100 here.
One level is like, âI want to be right here. Let me contact this person and see if I can buy an ad on his page.â So what I do is I build a dream 100 of every single person who is in the top ten in Google for the keywords Iâm dreaming about, and I can buy my way in where I just go and buy an ad directly on their page. In the past, back when we were doing more Biz Op stuff, I found the top three people here, and literally paid them to throw a pop on their page that people opt in to my newsletter. And I was not, I didnât work for this, but I was paying per opt in to get all the people who came to Google, searched for the thing, came for the thing, and they opt in. It was like the best leads ever.
Let me step back, thatâs one way to use Dream 100. But if you look at what Brian teaches at backlinko, which is super cool. He takes this page, and heâs like, âWhy is this page ranked number one? Why does Google actually like it? Thereâs got to be a reason.â So he does some stuff, heâs like, âOkay, this page has got, letâs say itâs got a 3000 word article, in the article he said the world sales funnels like 6 times, used these keywords, and hereâs some other keywordsâŠâ He kind of diagrams, what was that?
Then what he does, he takes this and thereâs different sites you can do to run a background thing, and he runs it through it and says, âHow many people are linking to this site.â And it says, âThis site has 682 links coming back to it. Hereâs all the links coming back and pointing to this page.â So we know that Googleâs algorithm is based on two things, whatâs on the page, and then who are all the people pointing back to you.
So what Brian does, what he teaches all his students, he says, âThis is your dream 100.â He doesnât say that, but thatâs what it is. He then takes this list of dream 100 and he then emails every single person. Heâs like, âHey dude, your email or blog is amazing. I saw youâre linking to my buddy over here. I wrote an article as well. His is only 3000 words, mine is 6. If youâd like, Iâd love for you to link over to mine as well.â And then he gets this dude now to link to his article, itâs even better, then this dude, and this lady, and this person, and this person. And soon all the people who are making this thing pop to number one start linking here. And within the week heâs number 10, and then 7, and then 3, and then 2 and then heâs just getting more links. Thatâs SEO, all dream 100.
Does that make sense? This process you guys, itâs the same over and over and over and over again. And then the last one on here I just put other, because this is true with every platform. If you guys learn to Twitter, what do you do? Do the Dream 100 list. How do I work my way in, how do I buy my way in? Thatâs the game. I want to be big on twitch, I want to be big on Pinterest. Whatever platform you want to be in, whatever next new platform is coming out, this is the game. Building your own channel, figuring out how to work my way in, how to buy my way in, and growing your own platform.
So that is it. What I recommend for all you guys, like I said 30 minutes ago, donât do all of these right now. It will suffocate you and it will be really hard. Pick one, which platform do you want to be the best at. Do you want the biggest email list, do you want the biggest Facebook following, biggest YouTubeâŠpick one, I donât care which one it is, but pick one, the one you like the most, the one you want to geek out, the one you want to go deep on the most and start building there and thatâs going to start building your own platform.
Then as you start growing, then you move to the last phase. This is like where in our company weâre at, but we didnât get here until 2 years ago, so donât think you have to do this today, but long term the goal is to get what we call Conversation Domination. How do I do this on all the platforms?
Start building your team out like, hereâs our Facebook Dream 100, hereâs our email dream 100, hereâ sour podcast, hereâs our YouTube, hereâs our Instagram, hereâs our blog. Thatâs what weâre doing out of our office. We got people in charge of all these things. Going deep, building dream 100 and then realizing we want to grow our Facebook following, people on Facebook like being on Facebook so letâs build our Facebook dream 100. How do we work our way in, how do we buy our way in, and letâs get them to come to our platform.
Letâs say I want to build my podcast following. We know people who listen to podcasts, listen to podcasts, so letâs build our dream 100 in the podcast, letâs work our way in, letâs buy our way in and build our platform there. If you want to be big on email, on YouTube, itâs the same process over and over and over again. And itâs not that difficult. Itâs pretty simple and a lot of fun.
And I believe that is the last phase of it. So if we kind of scroll here, Iâm going to go back to the beginning real quick and walk you guys through the 7 of these. So the foundation for this whole thing is this, itâs really understanding this. Thereâs three types of traffic. Traffic you control, traffic you earn, and traffic that you own. Thatâs the foundation.
So after you figure that out, then come back and be like, âWho is my dream customer?â Then you become obsessed with them so I can figure out where theyâre actually at, because I canât go and buy that traffic or work my way in unless I can figure out exactly where theyâre at in their life and how to communicate with them at that point.
So we have our dream 100 customer journey. So now we have an idea, we love our customer, know exactly who they are, weâre obsessed with them, whoâs got them already? Letâs go find those people and letâs go build a dream 100, and start building our well before weâre thirsty. Letâs build our ecosystem out there, then weâre going to start focusing on all these people. Whereâs the traffic I control, traffic I donât control, put it in those pages and then mush it back into traffic that we own, and from there itâs understanding the distribution channels, understanding the platforms, each of the channels. Itâs going to be similar, with little tweaks, little differences, but do that to build it out. Then as we grow we move to full on conversation domination as we start growing across all the platforms.
And that you guys is how we do the dream 100 in our company.
Alright everyone that is it for the third and final part of my presentation for Dream 100 Con. I hope you guys enjoyed this presentation. I thank Dana for putting on the event and allowing me to come and speak at it. Iâm glad that I was able to share with you guys because hopefully it gets you excited for the traffic secrets book.
Now I have one favor, if youâve enjoyed the last three episodes, I would love for you to take a screen shot on your phone and then go and post it on Facebook or Instagram, or any of the other networks you use. If youâre tweeting or pinning or whatever else, feel free to post it there. Be sure to tag me so I can see that youâre listening, thatâs how I know youâre cool. And then after youâve tagged me, then also use hashtag Marketing Secrets, and let other people know about this episode if you got value from it. Thanks so much you guys, appreciate you all, and we will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.
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Today we have part 2 of 3 where Russell speaks at Dream 100 Con about traffic and how to build your list. Here are some of the things you will hear in part 2:
Find out the difference between hot, warm and cold traffic, and why you need to change how you get your word out to them. Why you need to build out your dream 100 list by knowing who everyone else is in your market and what they are doing at all times. And find out how phones are like TVs in 1965 and how you can use that to your advantage.So listen here to part 2 of 3 of Russellâs super informative presentation at Dream 100 Con.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, this is Russell. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope yesterday you enjoyed part one of three from my presentation at Dream 100 Con. Today I want to give you part two.
So weâre going to drive in today into the next section of the presentation. I hope youâre taking notes and starting to piece together how this process and how this concept can work inside of your company. With that said weâre going to queue up the intro and then jump right into part number two of my presentation at Dream 100 Con.
Okay, now one thing I want to explain as youâre doing this is, these are little landing pages right here. The landing page or the funnel for each of these is going to be a little bit different because theyâre different parts in the journey. In fact, Dana this is the reason why your stuff works really, really good on Dream 100 and sucks on Facebook ads. Itâs not because the offer doesnât work, itâs because right now your offer works really good at this phase right here. Someone needs traffic? Boom, dream 100. So you have a list of people trying to get traffic, he dream 100âs them, itâs really, really good.
But if heâs going to come back here to somebody that they donât even know they need traffic, they just got their first website set up and theyâre trying to figure out how to sell something, that person needs dream 100 more than anybody, but if he says dream 100 theyâre like, âI donât know what heâs even talking about.â
As you move further out the person, they donât understand your language patterns, so you have to rephrase how you do it. So every single step back in this timeline, my landing page, my funnel has different ways that I explain things.
If youâve read the Dotcom Secrets book, I talk about, thereâs basicallyâŠ.how many of you guys know what Iâm drawing here? Thereâs hot traffic, thereâs warm traffic, and thereâs cold traffic. So the hot traffic, they know this thing, those people are super easy. You just have to push them over the edge and theyâre in. âI know about traffic, I know about everything. The dream 100? Sweet, thatâs more traffic. Iâm in.â Thatâs hot traffic, so thatâs how you speak to people.
People down here that are warm, you have to speak to them differently. They donât even know what they donât know. They donât know what they donât have. So you have to speak to them differently. And people that are really cold, you have to speak to them differently.
Jean Schwartz, how many of you guys study the old school copywriters? If not, they are the best. All the good stuff is from the old school. So Jean Schwartz, old dead dude whoâs a genius, he said, he was talking about this concept right here. He said, âIf your prospect is aware of your product and realizes it can satisfy his desire, your headline starts with a product.â So if he knows about your product, âI was at Funnel Hacking Live, I was onstage and I heard about Dream 100, Dana was there.â or âI was on a webinar and my buddy introduced me to Dana on this webinar and talked about this thing.â Like, they know what the product is, itâs really simple. âHey, just buy my product. Buy the thing. Buy Clickfunnels.â
If someone knows about Clickfunnels, I can just pitch the Clickfunnels. Now move back. If theyâre not aware of your product, only the desire itself, the headline starts with the desire. So if Iâm here, here Iâm selling the product. Here Iâm selling the desire. So if Iâm like, âI want to grow my company.â Thatâs my desire. So if Iâm speaking to someone in my world about desire, my headline, my hook, my pitch is not going to be like, âYou need a funnel.â Because theyâre like, I donât know what youâre talking about.â But if Iâm like, âI got a way to double your business in the next 30 days.â Thatâs their desire, âWell, what is it?â Then I can introduce them to like, âThereâs this weird thing called a funnel.â
âWho wants to get 10 times more traffic to your website without buying a single Facebook ad?â Thatâs the desire they have, now you can transition them into Dream 100. And then you come back here to the cold prospects. If heâs not aware of what he really seeks, heâs only concerned with a general problem your headline starts with the problem and crystallizes it into a specific need. So hereâs the problem, the problem is like, âI need somebody to give me money.â Thatâs where the traffic comes in or whatever.
So this is kind of what Iâm looking at. Now, one more example. As youâre going here with hot traffic, people that are close to the thing, if I walk up, like you guys right now, if I came to you guys and said, âHey guys, I figured out a new funnel. This funnel is amazing. I can plug it into any business and itâll add an extra zero to your bottom line.â How many of you guys want that funnel right now? Boom, everyoneâs in. Because you guys are all here in the awareness spectrum, you understand where itâs at.
So for me and for you guys, as a business owner, the first thing you want to do because this is the biggest problem I have. Iâll explain this and people are like, âCool.â And they start over here. You donât do that. How many of my Inner Circle members are in here? I tell you guys this all the time. The first thing you do is ignore everything and grab the pile of cash thatâs right there. Just grab it, take it and then run with it. Thatâs the first step.
Donât be like, Iâll get this in a minute, let me step over it really quick and let me try to figure out how to get these cold people. No, grab the pile of cash first. Thatâs step number one. So thatâs the first thing. Do that until the market runs out and itâs done. And most of your businesses, you can get to multiple millions of dollars a year only grabbing the warm traffic, so focus there. Find Dream 100 partners who, their list, their customers, their platform understand what the product is and then you just have to push them over. Itâs easier to sell, itâs more fun. And you get the money fast.
As you start growing and scaling, then you have to move this way on the spectrum. So next are warm people. For example, I could go to, and Anissa Holmes is in my Inner Circle, sheâs a dentist, dental guru from Jamaica right, so sheâs got a bunch of dentists, and what are dentists? They have a desire to grow their practice. They have no idea what a funnel is at all. So I can go and create a special landing page for Anissa and for the dentists and in here talk to them like, âHey how many of you dentists want to actually grow your company?â âOh we want to grow it.â And Anissa can be like, âthis is the secret. I donât tell many people about this, but thereâs this really weird thing that this guy named Russell came up with and itâs called a funnel, and Iâve been using it in my practice and itâs been amazing. Weâve grown this huge thing.â
And then all the dentists are like desiring this funnel. Then they come in, I can explain it to them, and we can move them towards me and theyâll buy funnels like crazy.
The third phase of this now is cold, and the lipmans test to figure out if your offer will sell to cold traffic is, pictureâŠ.how many of you guys went to Mall of America like next door here? That thing is huge, right? So imagine this, you go there during lunchtime, you go to the food court, and thereâs 8 thousand people running around, you get a chair, you step on top of htat chair in the middle of the food court, you stand up and said, âHey everybody..â and they all stop and look at you and youâre like, âThis is the deal, I got this really cool funnel you can plug into any of your businesses and it will give you an extra zero at the end of it. How many of you guys want it?â
Everyone at the food court is like, âWhat is he talking about? Is he selling funnel cakes? Did he say funnel cakes? I think he did, that sounds awesome.â Theyâre not going to make any sense. So if I speak my language patterns to the cold markets like that, itâs going to completely crash and burn. But if I stand on the chair and I say, âHow many of you guys want a free money making website?â Everyoneâs like âAhh!â and theyâre freaking out right. I can get them to come over here and be like, âCool, hereâs your free money making website, itâs called a funnel.â And theyâre like, âWhat? Whatâs a funnel?â And then all the sudden I can start moving them up this thing and warm them up, move them from cold to warm to hot.
Two of our biggest affiliates right now, all they do is they target cold traffic. And theyâre doing this, theyâre on the thing screaming at the top of their lungs, âIâll give you free money making websites. Free money making websites.â And the cold world is standing up and going crazy because of it.
So thatâs whatâs happening to that side of it. But do you notice as I go further and further back, my messaging has to change. The landing page changes the funnel changes, everythingâs changing as Iâm going this direction. So initially youâre just going to go right here.
Then the other side of this, after someoneâs come in and they bought funnels, then we start thinking, what are all the other things someoneâs going to buy? So if they bought funnels, they may buy traffic, they may graphic design, they may buy all the different things that they need, after they got a funnel. So start looking at that side. Let me make sure I got my doodle right here. In fact, I will pop it up right here. Hereâs the finished one.
So the other side Iâm looking at, these are potential dream 100 partners and things like that. This right here, as someoneâs come through this world and if theyâre not already using my software, my platform, my product, my service, then Iâm going to do an opportunity switch, trying to get these people to come backwards and come to me.
So if youâve read the Expert Secrets book, we talked about there are three core markets, Steven Larsen calls them the three core desires, which I think is really cool. Thereâs health, thereâs wealth, and thereâs relationships right. And you look from there, every one of your products and services fall into one of these three. And if you break down one more thing, then thereâs a submarket typically. And then from there thereâs all these different niches that are coming off here right.
So whatâs typically happening on this side of the value ladder, is somebody, boom, theyâre in my world, theyâre making money online, theyâre using funnels, maybe theyâre using some crappy funnel software, like every other product out there on planet earth. So Iâm looking at that, and theyâre in my submarket and theyâre using, I donât even know the names of them, letâs say itâs 10 minute funnels, or something like that, theyâre using another product.
So my job then is to have to opportunity switch those people back into my thing. Or maybe theyâre in our world, but their selling stuff on Amazon. So they understand what funnels are, but theyâre selling stuff on Amazon. So maybe theyâre right here, so if I do a dream 100 with somebody who this is their customer base, at this point in the timeline theyâre making good money on Amazon, the way I present it is going to be different.
âhey Amazon is awesome, but Iâm going to show you an opportunity switch. Instead of doing this one right here, letâs switch you to this other opportunity right here.â So my joint ventures, my dream 100âs, all those things are coming from switching them back into my opportunity as opposed to just trying to pitch them on my solution.
So this is, I want to kind of help you guys think about this, this is your customerâs journey. I havenât heard too many people talk about this and very few people think about this. But for you guys, I would be spending time doing this. Sitting down like, âHereâs my customer, what am I selling? What are they buying before they come to me? What are the things theyâre buying after me? What are those kind of things?â It gives you a good landscape of where you fit in the ecosystem for this person, for their life.
The better you understand your customer, the easier this whole game becomes. For me whenever Iâm thinking about my dream customer, that person in the middle, if youâve heard my story before-When I was 12 years old I started ordering junk mail like crazy. I was obsessed with it. I would get all the work at home junk mail that would come in. Every single day Iâd get a stack of 20-30 letters and I would come home from school, I was in 7th grade, and my parents would hand me my stack of junk mail. I would take it in and start reading it.
So for me, whenever Iâm trying to figure out what my dream customers would want, I picture little 12 year old Russell, my parents called me Rusty back then, so Iâm picturing Rusty sitting on his bed, reading this junk mail, and Iâd rip it open and read the headline, and then throw it away, then open the next one and be like, âOh, whoa, oh my gosh.â And if it got me to the point where I have to have this, Iâd go and beg my parents to borrow their credit card, thatâs how I knew it was a good offer.
So for me, Iâm thinking about myself, 12 year old Russell sitting in the bed, would this thing Iâm offering them, would this get them to want to go beg their parents for their credit card? Thatâs my test.
How many of you guys have bought something from me in the past? Itâs because it passed that test. I sat there, âWould 12 year old Russell buy this?â and if Iâm like nah, we donât sell it. But if Iâm like, yeah, I would totally go beg my parents for the credit card. Thatâs the test, thatâs how we get them in.
So become obsessed with your dream customer. The more you understand them, the more you understand where theyâre coming from, where theyâre going, what their goals are, what theyâre trying to get away from, where theyâre trying to go to. The better you understand this about your customer, the better youâre going to be able to serve them, be able to sell stuff to them, also youâre going to be able to better understand where in the dream 100 they fit.
If Iâm looking at this and I say, âOkay, whoâs my dream 100? Alright Iâm going to start here, this is the big pile of cash, who are the closest partners I have, where our customers are easily going to figure it out?â So usually my first dream 100 goes from here. Whatâs the stuff they have right before they need me? Stuff right after they need me? Those are going to be the easiest ones to sell.
Then after I saturate that, then I go to the next level. What are the next two or three levels here, things that are coming before me? So Iâm moving more to warm. And whatâs the next things here, this direction? I start moving out, I tweak my dream 100 campaigns to focus on that. And it keeps going out from there.
Most of you guys luckily, in most of your businesses, you can make a couple million dollars a year just doing these two here. But if you want to get to ten million dollars, youâve got to come out to about here. And right now, weâll pass a hundred million dollars this year, and right now we are a continual focus of going further and further and further out. Because eventually you run out of customers, youâve saturated everything. How many of you guys see 40-50 ads of me a day, every single day?
I canât show you that many more ads you guys, Iâm trying but it runs out. So eventually you have to keep going further and further out. I just want to kind of paint that picture so you understand long term if you want to keep scaling, thatâs what itâs about. Itâs getting better at language patterns. This way, this way, getting better at teaching to the warm and to the cold. But donât skip that, get the big pile of money first before you shift to the next one and move out from there. Make sense? Sweet.
Okay, now that youâve got this vision of who is my dream customer, then the next question we ask ourselves is who has my dream customer? And this is where in my mind the Dream 100 picks up. Who has my dream customer?
So the first phase, and Dana talked about this yesterday, the first phase in this is I need to first off, build a list. How many of you have built out a list of your dream 100? How many of you guys havenât yet? What are you doing here? This is your first thing, on the plane ride home you should be doing this.
You need to actually build your list, which means sit down with a piece of paper and write out your list. Some of you guys have like, âhow do I find my list? How do I know who my dream 100 partners are?â I get that all the time. âI just donât know how to find it or figure it out. How do I find these people?â And if you have to answer that question it means youâre not obsessed enough about this guy right here, or girl.
When you become obsessed with your dream customer, you put yourself in their spot. For me, when Iâm thinking about things Iâm like, âokay, if I were my dream customer and I went to Google, what would I be searching for and how would I say it?â Iâd be searching for this phrase and this phrase and start searching. And as I start searching, guess what starts popping up? All these options start popping up on both sides of it.
So I go to the pages, I subscribe to the email lists. I go to the podcasts, I subscribe. Iâm becoming insane. I need to get a really good vision of the ecosystem that already exists. Every one of your markets, thereâs already an ecosystem that exists. Donât think youâre coming in and inventing something new. There is an existing ecosystem.
If you read my forward to the Dream 100 book, do you have the Dream 100 book here? Does anyone have the book? This is key. Some of you guys thought I was saying, oh yeah, Russell uses this for traffic. But itâs more than that. Listen to what I said in the forward here.
âAs the CEO and cofounder of the fastest growing blah, blah, blahâŠâŠ..Itâs difficult to narrow down one thing thatâs really propelled us to where we are more than anything else, but itâs not. Itâs the Dream 100. The Dream 100 is the foundation for our entire company. At Clickfunnels we donât just leverage Dream 100 approach for traffic, we use it for everything.â
Did you guys catch that when you read the forward? We use it for everything. âHow do we pick what markets we want to go into? The dream 100. We use Dream 100 to research different markets, niches and narrow down to the one that suites us best. How do we decide our blue ocean strategy? We use dream 100 to find the red oceans and carve out our place in the market. How do we create our offers and figure what weâre going to sell? We use dream 100 to model offers that are working in our marketplace, which takes the headaches and the hassle out of blind guessing.
âEverything weâve done has come back to mastering the dream 100 and specifically knowing how to compliment as opposed to compete. That is how you build your foundation. From there you just get traffic by again tapping into dream 100 and the rest is history.â
I want you guys to understand, when weâre doing this and Iâm deciding what market to go into, or how do I destroy this market? Or how do I conquer the whole thing? My first goal is, I have to understand the ecosystem. I had a guy that came to one of our coaching programs and heâs like, âIâm going to be a real estate guru.â And heâs all excited and he starts telling me. Iâm like, âCool, who are all the people in your dream 100?â and heâs like, âI donât know.â Iâm like, âHow about Robert Kiyosaki?â and heâs like, âWhoâs that?â Iâm like, âAre you kidding me? You donât know⊠How about this guy, this guy?â And I named off like 30 different real estate gurus and he hadnât heard of any of them.
Iâm like, âDude, youâre going to get screwed. Youâre going to get destroyed.â And heâs all excited, âIâm going to teach people how to flip houses, have you heard of this before?â Iâm like, âDude, thatâs what everybodyâŠwhat? How in the worldâŠHow do I know more about your market than you?â I envision, this is this huge ecosystem that Iâm stepping into and I need to come in there and be like, that guyâs teaching that, theyâre teaching this, theyâreâŠ..and I understand, hereâs everything thatâs happening, so I have a really clear picture and Iâm like, whereâŠ.How am I different? Where do I carve out my space in this ecosystem? How do I create my very own category that I can control, that I can own?
Thereâs a really good book that I have my entire team reading right now, itâs called Playing Bigger. Only like two people Iâve recommended it to. Itâs called Playing Bigger and the whole concept of the book is about creating your own category, which is very similar to what we talk about with new opportunity and things like that.
But if you look at any market, thereâs always one category king in every single market, which sucks up like 90% of the business and everybody else fights over the last 10%. Look at us in the sales funnel world, weâve sucked up 90% of all the business, weâve got all these little âme tooâsâ trying to compete for the last 10%. But we own the market; we are the category king.
Look at Apple, they are the category king of multiple things. Theyâre the category king of phones, theyâre the category king of music, theyâre the category king of all these things. They suck up 90% of the business and everyone else fights over the scraps.
For you, if you read that book it teaches you about category design. How you design your category so you can be the person. So I walk in the ecosystem, I want to look around and be like, which category hasnât been taken yet? If I come in and be like, âOh cool, theyâre flipping houses, Iâm going to do that too.â Then youâre just another me too and the best case scenario if thereâs already a category king, youâre fighting over the scraps with everybody else.
So Iâm walking into this ecosystem trying to find all the different players, all the people, everything my dream customer is seeing right now every single day in their news feeds. I want to get a very good perspective and I want to figure out, how am I going to create my business? Because the whole foundation comes from that.
So if you donât know yet, itâs time to start doing the research, start becoming intimate with your market. Because if you donât know what all the different messages are bombarding who youâre trying to serve right now, itâs going to be really difficult for you to try to compete in that world.
But for me Iâm in there, and I know what everybodyâs talking about all the time. Thatâs the key. So the first thing is understanding that ecosystem, and then the second step that Dana talked about is starting to dig your well before youâre thirsty. You gotta go in there and start figuring it out, start building a relationship. Start sending packages, start sending gifts, go to events, meet people in your market, getting to know them, calling them on the phone, buying all their products, subscribing to their podcast and listening to them.
I listen to conservatively, on the low end, an hour a day, some days three or four hours a day of podcasts. People are like, âRussell, what are you trying to learn in their podcast? Are you trying to pick up the next marketing thing?â Iâm like, âNo.â I know all the people in my ecosystem, Iâm listening to what all of them are saying so I can have my finger on the pulse, so I know whatâs happening. I know whoâs talking about what, whatâs happening, where theyâre going, what their ideas are. So I can make sure I can create and continue to dominate my category.
And then Iâm sitting there thinking, okay well, JLD is talking about this, and over at Mixergy Andrew Warner is talking about this, and I look at all these different people. Iâm like cool, now that I know where I fit in the ecosystem, I see what everyone is doing. Now itâs easy to be like, âOh me and JLD could do cool things, because heâs on Entrepreneur on Fire, what if I helped him do a funnel thing with his people, now itâs this really good compliment between us.â Okay, Iâm not competing with him, but I can compliment what weâre doing.
Any wrestlers in the room? A couple of wrestlers. So in wrestling, just so you guys, if youâve never wrestled before. In wrestling, when we come, for those that donât see it, donât know wrestling, itâs probably weird watching it. But I come out and I shake someoneâs hand initially and we start the match and weâre head to head. Weâre competing against each other. Now, the person who wins the wrestling match is not the person who goes head to head the best. Wrestling is all about angles.
When weâre out there doing hand fighting and doing all sorts of stuff, the goal of what Iâm trying to do is get someone to step so I can get an angle on them, and then I can attack them. So I get them to step, it opens up a little hole and then boom, I shoot and I take them down. Iâm finding my angle.
Itâs the same thing in this dream 100 stuff. Iâm not going head to head with people. Iâm looking at everything, building my own category and saying cool, this category, this thing I control, I own, I can partner with everybody on this now. Everybody fits in somehow because I designed it the right way initially. Now all these people in the ecosystem become partners, and we can complement each other as opposed to going head to head and competing. So youâre figuring out this thing.
Again, itâs coming back to figuring it out, consuming everybodyâs stuff, reading the blog posts, listening to the things, getting their emails and watching whatâs happening, becoming intimate with your market, and at that point when you start approaching people you can figure out exactly how what you do fits in with what theyâre doing.
We may or may not be working on a really cool software product based around this whole concept. And whatâs really cool in this thing, is you literally, you plug in your whole dream 100 and it has a facebook newsfeed of what all your dream 100 is doing. So in the future when this is live youâll be able to login and youâll see everything. So hereâs someone posted a podcast or a blog post, and youâll see a whole newsfeed of everyone in your dream 100, everything theyâre doing at all given times, so youâll always have your finger on the pulse in your market.
I canât tell you how important that is, understanding those things. Alright so dig your well before youâre thirsty, thatâs the first step. And like Dana said, thatâs when you start building a relationship, serving people. How can you actually help these people? Not with the intention of them doing something, but ahead of time, doing something really nice for them.
When I first met Tony Robbins the first time, how many of you guys thought when I saw Tony Robbins, I started licking my chops like, âOh my gosh, if he promotes me itâs going to be the greatest thing in the world.â Everyone does. And guess what happens, everyone that comes into Tonyâs world, they meet him for like 5 seconds and they pitch him on the first thing that comes out of their mind. What happens to all those people? They disappear, they come off the thing.
So what I did instead. I met Tony and I was like, âAhhh, this guy is amazing.â And I freaked out a little bit. And then I was like, âHow can I help get Tonyâs message out? I know thatâs whatâs most important to him.â And for the next decade of my life, ten years, ten years of my life I went back and tried to figure out how to serve Tony. I spoke at his events for free, Iâd cover my own flights, my hotels. I did, uh, I helped with new products, I did multiple consultations on the phone with his team members who were stuck at this and that. Trying to help them, coach them, for an entire decade. I helped and I served and I never asked for anything once ever. I just did it.
And then guess what happened ten years later? Then I hired him to have him come on our stage, I wrote him a huge check twice to come on our stages, a bunch of stuff like that. And then when my book came out, I was like, âHey Tony, I wrote another book, Iâm so excited.â I was like, âIs there any way you could do an interview with me on your Facebook page?â He was like, âYes.â âReally?â Did the interview and we got 3.2 million people to watch the interview and sold thousands and thousands of books.
But I didnât just come up to Tony day one right. I was building the relationship. And so many good things came from that relationship. Tony introduced me to like 10 other people who introduced me to like 10 other people. If you come with a serving attitude, just like Dana said yesterday, if you come with that serving attitude it will make you one of the cool people in the market place to get passed around to everybody.
If you come in and youâre pitching people from day number one, nobody passes you around. âOh that person just pitched me. That guyâs annoying. That person, beware of them all the time.â
If you come in and just serve and give and do all that kind of stuff, then Iâm like, âAh man, you should meet so and so and so and so.â And I start plugging you into my network and instantly you infiltrate the entire dream 100? And again, if youâve created your business in a spot where youâre your own category king, now itâs just like, whatâs the logical connection so we can all work together in this thing, and boom, everything blows up really, really fast.
So dig your well before youâre thirsty. Now Iâve been doing this whole process, right. Iâve been mapping out my dream 100, is this a laser? Yeah. Alright, hereâs the laser, that you can barely see. So I list out my dream 100 and I write out all the different names of the people. Now that I have the names of the people and Iâm plugging into their stuff, Iâm listening to them, figuring out what theyâre doing, now my goal is to figure out, of all these people who are the people that I can buy my way in? And who are the people I can work my way in?
So thereâs two different things, how do I buy my way? And how do I work my way in? Let me see if my next image is the one that explains this, it might be. Yeah. Okay, so I come over here and letâs say, my dream 100 on there has got a whole bunch of amazing people, letâs say thereâs Tony Robbins, there is John Lee Dumas, thereâs Andrew Warner, thereâs Richard Branson. All my different people here.
So I go through and letâs say Iâm listening to Andrew Warnerâs podcast, heâs the guy who runs Mixergy. So Iâm listening to his podcast, Iâm like, âCool, he interviews entrepreneurs, thatâs cool. I could potentially work my way in, I could get on his show, get an interview and get him to spread the message, but he also has ads, so I can buy my way in as well, and I could buy ads on his show.â Maybe with someone else Iâm like, âthey have a show and they donât interview people, but they do sell ads on it.â Maybe I see a Facebook live, or Iâm looking at their email, Iâm looking at all the different communication channels and Iâm categorizing and saying, âWhat are the people that I think I can work my way in to get them to do it for free? And who are the people where Iâm probably not going to work my way in but I can buy my way in?â
With Tony Robbins, even though it took me the decade to get Tony Robbins to ever promote me, during the interim guess what I did? I targeted every Tony Robbins fan on Facebook, on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram and weâve been running ads to his entire, Iâve been buying my way into his network, buying ads to his people, for the last 5 or 6 years.
So just because Tony is not going to say to me or to most of us initially, because of the way the network is setup I can still buy ads in front of those things. So Iâm always looking, can I buy my way in, or can I work my way in?
And then the goal of both of those things is to get them to become traffic that I own. I know when Dana is talking about Dream 100, his focus point is on working your way in, getting on the shows, doing the jv, having them send emails to your list, doing those kind of things. That stuff is amazing, that stuff takes more effort, more time, but itâs free. Other stuff costs more money, itâs kind of like, how many of you guys have more time than money? How many of you guys have more money than time? Who has more time than money? Who has more money than time?
âSo where do I focus at first, Russell?â If you have more time than money, focus on working your way in. Try to get on the show, do those things, get them the email, build a relationship, you have more time. If you have more money, a lot of times itâs easier just to buy your way in. How many of you guys have a decade to try to court Tony Robbins before youâre going to drive traffic? Itâs a lot of work right. But you can go tonight and start running ads to all of his following.
So it comes down to that. So if you donât have money yet and youâre getting started, focus on working your way in. How do I getâŠwhat are the people in my dream 100 that have a platform that I can come into and I can leverage to get people to join my platform, thatâd be my focal point.
If itâs like, Iâm busy, I have a bunch of things, I just want to focus on the other way. Then just do the traffic control and buy your way in all those things. And ideally youâre going to be doing both.
Itâs funny, this is the first time Iâve taught this and I know thereâs all these things that like I know Iâm teaching, Iâm going to talk about this later, but I need it for context for now, so Iâm just trying to make sure I donât screw this up. Iâll keep going from there.
Any questions about this part at all yet. Each step is kind of layering on top of each other. So weâre finding our dream 100, weâre figuring out who we can buy way in, who we can work our way in with a goal again, of transforming everything to our own platform, and building our own platform.
Alright, so thatâs how we start creating our dream customers. If we go back to the very beginning we have three types of traffic, figuring out dream customers journey, who has our dream customers, and how do we get these dream customers from these other platforms and move them onto our platform and get them on our list, have them listening to our podcast, have themâŠ.whatever platform it is that youâre trying to build, weâre trying to use the dream 100 to get their customers into it.
Just like Dana did right here with the goat feed yesterday. The empty one and itâs all about dumping a little bit in from every single person, so it builds your platform and the bigger your platform gets, the bigger platform you can leverage and it keeps growing like that.
Alright the next phase here. Now I want to start shifting so you guys can understand distribution. So distribution is this game, this is how it works. Last night in the hotel room I was watching Shark Tank. How many of you guys still watch Shark Tank? Cool. Itâs interesting if you watch Shark tank, if you look at how they all do their deals, someone brings a deal to them, all the sharks, if you notice this, in their heads, they donât say it out loud, but as you listen to their questions and which deals they pick and they donât pick this is all theyâre focusing on.
Each of the sharks has a distribution channel that they understand. Laurieâs really good at QVC, Damon is really good at retail, Cuban is good at pretty much everyone thinks heâs cool and he just plugs into whatever he wants. But everyoneâs got a channel that theyâre really, really good at, a distribution channel.
So the deal comes in and itâs like a clothing line and all the other sharks are like, âIâm out, Iâm out, Iâm out.â And Damonâs like, âIâm in.â because he knows the distribution channel, and he grabs the distribution channel, he plugs it in, and boom, the retail takes off.
Laurie, sheâs like, amazing deals come by and sheâs like, âThis wonât work for QVC, itâs out.â Comes in and sheâs like, ahh, have a distribution channel where she takes the deal, plugs it in, and boom it explodes overnight.
So distribution is the key. Thatâs why youâre trying to build your own platform, your own platform is your own distribution channel. Itâs the most valuable thing. Steven Larsen said it yesterday, the most valuable thing in your business is your customer list, itâs your distribution channel. When all is said and done itâs the only thing that matters.
If you look at all the companies, the big tech companies that get bought and sold, itâs all based on their distribution channel. I remember when I first got started, the first time I ever saw a company get bought for over a billion dollars was when eBay bought Skype. It was like, I donât know, 3 or 4 billion dollars. I was like, what? I was thinking, did they buyâŠ.Skype didnât even have a business model at the time, they werenât making any money. EBay was like the biggest company back in the day.
Do you guys remember back EBay was the most amazing thing and like all day long you were just trying to snipe auctions all day? It was the company right. Myron remembers. There was like sniper software where like 25000 people all bid on one thing, and then the software was like, buy at the last second. It was really fun. Then they ruined their business and now itâs all boring.
But EBay bought Skype and I was like, they had the best tech people on planet earth, they could have cloned Skype in about a week. But they didnât do that. Why did they spend billions of dollars instead? Because Skype had the distribution channel, they had the list.
Why did Zuckerberg want to buy Snapchat? Because Snapchat had the distribution channel at the time. Why did he buy Instagram? They had the distribution channel.
If you look at all the big acquisitions, itâs not about the technology. Technology is easy to clone and to beat, itâs because of the distribution channel. Thatâs the magic. Every business, if you look at the actual value, what they evaluate things on, itâs the distribution channel, the list. So if you start understanding that, everything weâre doing is like, who has the distribution channels? Those are my dream 100 partners.
Now, I talk about this at Funnel Hacking Live. Some of you guys may remember me talking about this. Gary Vaynurchuk says something in a little clip that was super cool, he said, âIf you look at TV in 1965 itâs the same thing that our phones are today.â Do you guys remember me talking about this, who were there?
In 1965 there were only like three channels. There was ABC, CBS, and NBC, and it was funny because when I was talking to Tony Robbins, the first time I met him was over ten years ago now, and it was after his company had kind of collapsed. He was like trying to figure out the next step and thatâs when he met all the internet marketing nerds and we kind of helped him with some stuff.
But whatâs interesting is I was talking to him about it, he said, âLook, when I got started there were three channels. If you flip to any channel, guess who was on every single commercial? This big, huge giant selling his stuff. It was easy, the distribution channel was three things. We just bought all the ads on every single channel and I became Tony Robbins. Now what happened is distribution got fragmented. Cable came out and all the sudden thereâs not three channels, thereâs like 300 hundred channels. I canât buy them on all of them, thereâs all these niche channels. I go over on ESPN and it doesnât convert for some reason, I go over here and it doesnât convert. And I ran out of money because I couldnât keep up with this whole distribution thing. It was really, really confusing.â
So thatâs why they were struggling at the time. So what Gary said, when he said the phone is like TV 1965, for me it was this huge aha. This is the key. So if you look at this, back when TV first came out, the distribution was it got TVâs into peopleâs homes. Then there was the channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and on each channel were the different shows.
So thatâs what you need to understand, these things kind of match what weâre doing today. So today this is the distribution channel, our phones. I donât think I would have always believed that, but two years ago in Clickfunnels, I mean, we did see a lot of traffic, and prior to two years ago the majority, 60-70% of all traffic in our network came from desktop, and now itâs flopped. The majority of all traffic coming across all 65000 customers accounts, I mean millions and millions and millions of visitors a day, the majority, 60 or 70% is all coming from phones.
So this is the future, itâs going to continue to grow, itâs not going down. We were in Kenya hanging out with these kids and none of them had computers, but guess what they all have? This. I guarantee you as our kids get older, theyâre not going to have computers, this is the thing.
So if you look at this, this is the phone from 1965, thereâs a lot of different apps. If you look at the apps, again, itâs the category king right. The apps that take up like 90% of all the bandwidth on the phone are a couple of things. Itâs Facebook app, itâs messenger app, itâs Instagram, itâs YouTube, itâs Pinterest for some people. Thereâs only 5 or 6 apps and thatâs it.
So for us, you have to understand, everyoneâs got their phones. Itâs like the TVs, itâs been done. The apps are there, they already have billions of people on the core apps that are there, so the job that we have right now, just like back here is for us to become Happy Days or the Tonight Show or whatever. We need to be building our own show on these platforms. And thatâs the big aha, thatâs understanding distribution.
So these things are in peopleâs hands, the channels are already there, we just have to create our own shows and build the distributions. Itâs easier today than itâs ever been because everyoneâs got their phone and thereâs nothing like, back in the day you had to get NBC to decide your showâs awesome. Today any of us could start a show, you just click a button and boom, your platform is alive. So understanding the distribution is right there.
Hey you guys, thanks so much for listening to day number two, session number two I should say. Hopefully youâre enjoying this so far. Alright, tomorrow I will release the last of the three part series here for my presentation at dream 100 con.
You guys, this is the foundation for all traffic. I hope you are getting excited by it. And hopefully youâre getting pumped for the Traffic Secrets book that will be coming out later next year. I donât want to say my only goal in this is to cause massive FOMO, but Iâm not going to lie, I want to cause massive FOMO through the book, because Iâm working my butt off on it. And so I figure if I gotta work this hard, then you need to desire the book as much as possible. So just remember this is scratching the surface of what will be happening inside the Traffic Secrets book. Hope youâre enjoying it and weâll see you guys tomorrow.
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On todayâs very special 3 episode series Russell speaks at Dream 100 Con about traffic and how to build your list. Here are some of the awesome things in this portion:
Find out how Russell got started building his list, and what he learned about spam free emailing. Hear why everyone around him made half a million dollars a month with Adsense while he was still just building his list. And find out how Russell figures out and narrows down who is dream client is with a simple diagram.So listen here to part 1 or 3 of Russellâs super informative presentation at Dream 100 Con.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a special three part series of the Marketing Secrets podcast. Over the next three episodes Iâm going to be sharing with you guys clips from a presentation I did at Dan Derricks Dream 100 con.
I told you guys before that Iâve been working on the Traffic Secrets book and testing my material, so the first time I ever taught parts of this publicly was at Danaâs event. So I wanted to share it with you. Itâs not the whole process, just a piece of it, but hopefully it will get the wheels in your head spinning about how Dream 100 works, how you buy your way in, and work your way in and how customer life line would work, and a whole bunch of other amazing things.
Iâm doing this as a tease, to get you excited for the Traffic Secrets book thatâs coming out next year. So thatâs kind of the game plan. Hopefully it gives you guys some ideas. This is part one of three, when we get back from the intro, we will start right into that presentation. So thanks so much you guys, I hope you enjoy behind the scenes from my presentation from Dream 100 Con.
To begin with, I just want to thank Dana. Itâs been so fun, Iâve been talking about Dream 100 for the last decade or so, and almost nobody ever listens to me, except for Dana. And then Dana took it and has taken it to such bigger, such a big mass level. Itâs so funny, yesterday I was watching as he talked about Chet Holmes, who is kind of the originator of the Dream 100, and Chet was a personal friend of mine who passed away a few years ago, and his daughter has actually taken over his company since. I messaged her yesterday to let her know that you guys are here in this room, talking about a concept that was pioneered by her father, which is really special for her and for Chet and for everything.
Iâm just so grateful for everything Danaâs put together, and doing this. Isnât he just one of the coolest humans youâve ever met on earth? Heâs always giving and always serving.
Alright, to kick today off, I actually wanted to talk about something and get it on film so that when I pass away someday you guys can watch this and then fulfill what I need to be done. Does that sound good?
So I have a friend in our community, his name is Mark Holverson. Does anyone know Mark Holverson? A couple of you guys. Mark Holversonâs an amazing human being in our community, one of my peers and he passed away last weekend of cancer, which was a really tragic thing. But whatâs interesting is, right after he found out he had cancer, about five years ago, he was onstage speaking at an event like this, and Vince Reed actually published it on his Facebook page and I had a chance to watch his whole presentation. And it was right after Mark found out he was going to pass away.
And during his presentation he talked about legacy and where he was going and all sorts of stuff. And it just got me really inspired. And Iâm not going to pass away, that I know of, so donât think that thatâs what Iâm saying here. But I was thinking about, if I was to pass away how do I leave this whole thing? What would I want my legacy, at the end of this?
Iâve heard other people say, âMy goal is to get a million people at my funeral, thatâs my biggest thing.â I donât really want. In fact, I donât any of you guys to be at my funeral. I want my wife and kids and family to do that. But the day my funeral is over I need all of your guyâs help. So everyoneâs got to remember this, someoneâs going to be here and remember this part of it, and I need you to take this part out. So the day my funeral is over, I want to build out the biggest Dream 100 campaign of all time.
Every single person Iâve ever had a chance to influence or impact I want to invite them to the last ever Funnel Hacking Live. I want to get, Dana, if youâre still alive at this time, I want you to be in charge of this whole thing. But I want Dream 100 voxes going out to all the biggest influencers, all the people, and I want to throw the biggest party ever.
This actually happened a little while ago, there was a guy who was a legend in our industry, his name was Marty Ellison, he owned a company called Board Room. Anyone ever heard of Board Room? And he owned that company and when he passed away, his partner Brian Kurts did something similar. They threw a huge marketing party, it was called the Titans of Marketing Summit. They had all the best speakers come in and speak. And I remember listening to that event, that course and I thought, when I die this is how I want my legacy to end.
So weâre going to do a big, huge Dream 100 campaign, weâre going to get everyone in the world to come to the last Funnel Hacking Live ever, and then Iâm going to have all my friends and colleagues come and speak about what weâve all learned on this journey together. So thatâs my game plan, Iâve got it on video now, so that someday you guys will know my wishes. So thatâs the game plan, does that sound good?
Thereâs a little twang that keeps happening, is that fromâŠ.anyway, I donât know if itâs from Iâm talking too loud.
Okay, one other story and then weâll get to the good stuff. So this is going to hopefully help you guys understand the importance of what youâre learning here at the Dream 100.
So I had a chance, I actually flew here from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was in Jackson Hole at a secret Illuminati, maybe it was the Bilderberg, I donât know a secret group of marketers who all got together for like three days and we did a whole bunch of manly stuff, which anyone who knows me, Iâm not very good at manly stuff. We were shooting guns, I took last place. We were fly fishing, I caught the least amount of fish. We went hiking, all these things that I donât normally do, but it was fun because I hung out with all these guys who were all amazing in their own spirit, in their own businesses.
One of the guys who was there is a guy named Tom Bilyeu. How many of you guys know who Tom is? Oh good job, a bunch of you guys do. So Tom, he started a company called Quest. Who has ever had a Quest bar before, Quest nutrition? So he started this company and it blew up to a value of over a billion dollars before he sold his portion of the company and retired. Now heâs doing Impact theory and a bunch of other cool things.
But he built his company up to over a billion dollars, and as Iâm asking him, âHow did you start this thing up?â And he explained how he started the entire company. And whatâs cool, after he told me I talked to Dave about last night, and Daveâs like, âlet me see if he said it anywhere else.â And Dave found an interview, an actual quote of this. So I want you guys to hear this. This is a quote from the podcast where he explained how he launched Quest. But whatâs interesting is he did the same thing that you guys are all doing here in this room today. So this is what Tom said about launching Quest.
He said, âWe had a very different approach that got a lot of people excited, not just about the product, but they felt good about the way we treated them. We went old school (old school dream 100) researching several hundred health and fitness influencers, then sending them hand written letters and free samples. This was all about showing an understanding of what others were trying to achieve, that Quest was interested in helping them connect with their audiences. When people are building community they have real sense of service to that community. We would send them a free product and say, âif you like it, tell people about it. And if you hate it, tell them about it too.â
âNot trying to steer peopleâs comments, gave us a pretty good reputation. Some didnât like it and said so. But the vast majority loved it and were grateful that we showed an understanding of who they were and what they were trying to do so they spread the word.â
The foundation of his billion dollar supplement company all started here with the dream 100. Is that awesome? Okay so this is the foundation, you guys, for all these things.
Alright, so what Danaâs talking about is true. Okay, so some of the, what Iâm going to be talking about for the next couple of hours, so you guys can context. Iâm in the middle, well not the middle, the beginning of writing my third book, which is called Traffic Secrets. So thereâs Dotcom Secrets, thereâs Expert Secrets, and this is the last and final book in the trilogy, and then Iâll never write a secrets book again, because Iâm out of them. But the third one is called Traffic Secrets. So Iâve been working on the framework for the whole thing.
And I messaged Dana about two or three months ago, âJust so you know dude, this is so good for you.â Because the entire framework for the Traffic Secrets book is based on the Dream 100. So a lot of the stuff you guys have been talking about is the foundation of everything that is going to be inside that book. But I spent all day, the last month or so, working on the outline and getting things done. And then yesterday I was sitting in the back of the room doodling out all the key frameworks for the book. And I got them back this morning at 4:30 in the morning. So Iâm really excited they got done in time.
So Iâm going to be going through seven different images that are kind of the framework for the book, but itâs also the framework for how we do the Dream 100. There are, well youâll see. Itâs taken it to a whole other level. And hopefully this will give you guys, those who are beginning will give you guys a really good foundation. And those who are advanced, itâs going to give you the next five or six steps in the process. Does that sound like fun?
Alright cool. So Iâm going to start off, this is the very first core thing that you have to understand to really understand Dream 100, understand traffic, understand everything. There are three types of traffic, this is the framework for the entire book, the entire concept, if you can understand this everything else becomes really easy.
So there are three types of traffic. The first type of traffic here on the top left hand, is traffic you control. This is traffic where youâre going to buy your way in. So if you think about that, how many of you guys run Facebook ads in here? So you donât own that traffic, right. Zuckerberg owns all that traffic. He built the platform, he owns the thing, but he gave us the ability to come and to buy some of that traffic. So we can buy some of that traffic and we can control it, we can send it wherever we want to. We send it to buy a product, buy a service, listen to a podcast. We can control that traffic, but we donât own it.
How many of you guys have ever gotten a Facebook account shut down before? Thereâs proof you donât own it right there. Weâve lost hundreds of them, so donât feel bad. Itâs just part of the game.
So traffic control is the first thing. So whenever I got any kind of thing Iâm buying, itâs traffic that I control. The second type of traffic is traffic that you earn. This is where youâre working your way in. The first one youâre buying your way in, the second one youâre working your way. So for this it means, youâre getting traffic, youâre not paying for it, but youâre earning it. Youâre getting on a podcast interview, youâre doing a Facebook live with somebody, you put out really good content and people share it. Youâre earning that traffic.
How many of you guys, the majority of your traffic comes from traffic that youâre earning? And how many of you guys, the majority of your traffic youâre buying? About 50/50 split.
So itâs important to understand, thereâs traffic you control and traffic that you earn. The third type of traffic, and this is the best and most important is traffic that you own. My entire goal of our business, if you look at everything weâre doing from a traffic generation standpoint, is to convert traffic I can control, traffic that I earn, into traffic that I actually own. Because if you own the traffic, thatâs the secret sauce. When I own it, I can do whatever I want with it.
You can be like zuckerberg and you can rent it to people, you can do a product launch and sell your own products. You can do affiliate stuff, you can do whatever you want. But the goal is to own the traffic, thatâs the big thing. You own the traffic, we own the platform, thatâs how you win.
How many of you guys have your own platform, your own list, your own following, your own whatever? How many of you guys donât yet and youâre like, âThatâs the thingy I think I need really bad.â Okay, cool. This is the goal, this is the big secret about internet marketing. I remember when I first started learning this game I was struggling because I couldnât figure it out. There were so many things that were happening. And this is pre all the stuff that you guys do every day. It was pre-facebook, pre-myspace, it was actually pre-friendster. How many of you guys remember Friendster? Melanie was on Friendster, sheâs still buying ads on that one. Just kidding.
That was like the original social network and it was like, this is amazing, and then Myspace came out and crushed Friendster, and then Facebook came out and crushed Myspace, and soon the next thing is going to come out and crush Facebook someday, hopefully. Actually, I love Zuckerberg, I hope he keeps doing what heâs doing.
But l was out there trying to figure out this whole game, and thereâs so many things and I could not figure out how this whole game was played. And one day I was at the good old Google searching for probably how to get rich on the internet or some key word like that, like a lot of us start with. And some guy wrote an article and in this article he was talking about, heâs like, âhow many of you guys have seen those stories online where people say I made $30,000 in an hour, or 100,000 in a day? You probably thought those things were lies, right?â
I was like, âyeah, Iâm sure theyâre inflating their numbers.â Heâs like, âNo, actually those things are true.â And I was like, âWait, what?â And he started explaining, he said, âThis is the way it works. Imagine this, what these marketing people do is they build up a list of a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand people and then they send an email to that list, and they just get a percentage, like 2 or 3% of that email to buy, and then do the math. They have 100,000 people, 2% buy a $50 product, how much is that?â Itâs whatever the math is, $15,000, and if they send an email out every day, they literally can be doing what theyâre talking about.
And me, as a 20 year kid, sitting in my college dorm room reading this article, Iâm like, âOh my gosh, thatâs the secret. I just need my own platform. If I had my own list of people, thatâs the magic.â Now I, unfortunately, went about it the wrong way. So I had that idea and I was like, âThis is the key, Iâm going to do it. Itâs going to be amazing.â So the first thing I did, of course, I went to Google and I typed in, because I wanted my own email, so I typed in âbuy an email listâ and then I was reading about spam, I want to spam for email address.
So I went to a website and I think it was, spam-free email addresses dot com. I was like, this is awesome. And they were selling DVDâs of email addresses. And you could buy like a hundred thousand, a million, 5 million. I was like, âOh my gosh. Iâm going to buy 5 million, Iâm going to start with the biggest platform known to man.â
So I bought, I think it was $67 or $69 for a DVD with like 5 million email addresses. I was like, âOh my gosh.â And I ordered this thing, itâs coming to me, Iâm like telling my wife the math. Iâm like, âCollette, okay so 5million people, letâs just say we get 1% to buy the thing we sell, 1% of 5 million,â Iâm doing the math, âThatâs like 100 grand every time I click send.â And then Iâm like, âwait, but letâs just say I can serve only 1% of 1%..â Iâm doing the math, Iâm like, âEven if we screw this up itâs like $30 grand every time I send an email out.â
And Iâm so excited because at the time my wifeâs working, making $9.50 an hour, while Iâm at school wrestling and trying to not fail. So this thing comes and I get this disc, and I remember I plugged it in and there was this software that would send the emails out for you, and I put it in and I remember queuing it up and I saw the little software of all these like 5 million emails out there. I was like, âOh my gosh, this is amazing.â
Now, I didnât have a product at the time, so I was like making up a product. Iâm like, âWhat would people like to buy.â So I made up an idea for a product, I wrote an email that was probably, I donât know, 60 words, with a link to my paypal account. Like, âClick here to send me $10 for this product.â And then that was it. I was like, âIf people buy it, then Iâll go make the thing.â
So I queued up the email, back then it was pre-high speed internet, so I had to crawl under the desk, unplug our phone line, plug in the internet, bleep, bleep, bleep, all that kind of stuff pops up. Iâm like alright, click send. Iâm like, âCollette, letâs go to bed. By morning we are going to be rich.â I see like, âEmail 1 sent, number 2, 3, 4, 5âŠ.â And Iâm like, âOh my gosh, this is it. This is going to be the greatest day of my life.â
So I go to bed, all night long Iâm dreaming of how many sells are going to come in the night, whatâs going to happen, how amazing itâs going to be. And I wake up in the morning, and Colletteâs getting ready for work because sheâs still working at the time, and Iâm just telling her, âI havenât looked at the stats yet, but my guess is you can probably quit after today. If a just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction buy, thatâs more than you make in an entire month. This is going to be amazing.â
So Iâm all excited, telling her the whole story. And then sheâs like, âOkay, I gotta use the phone.â Iâm like, âYou canât use the phone.â This is pre-cell phones too. âYou canât use the phone, itâs mailing..â I look at the thing, $65,000 emails have been sent. âyou canât.â Sheâs like, âI have to call, I have to use the phone.â Iâm like, âUgh, youâre going to ruin everything.â So I crawl under the, pause the mailing thing, I crawl under the desk, unplug the modem, plug back in our phone line, and while Iâm still under the desk the phone rings. I stood up and hit my head and Iâm like, âOh, dangit.â
So come out under the thing, answer the phone, and on the other end is my internet service provider cursing me out on the phone. âWhat are you doing? Why are you sending these?â Iâm like, âNo, no, no, sir, I didnât send spam.â Heâs like, âNo, you sent out tons of spam.â Iâm like, âNo, you donât understand, I bought this DVD, it was called spam free email addresses dot com. You can go check out the site, theyâre completely spam free.â I explained the whole thing to him.
I still remember he told me, heâs like, âSon, that is the definition of spam.â And I was like, âwhat? Their spam free.â And heâs like, âHow do you think that, thatâs not a thing. You canât buy spam free email addresses.â And Iâm like, âBut the domain nameâŠ.â and we were going back and forth. And heâs telling me he was going to sue me and a bunch of stuff, but the last thing was, âIâm shutting down your internet.â And then it was gone.
I hung up the phone and then Colletteâs like, âWho was that on the phone?â Iâm like, âOh just some guy who had some questions about the thing. You shouldnât quit yet though. Letâs just go to work, enjoy it, weâll recap in the morning or tonight when you get back.â So she leaves out the door to go to work and Iâm sitting there, and I canât even check to see what happened because our internet is now gone. I have no access to even get back on.
So Iâm all depressed, I get ready for school, I go to the school and I get to school and I get to the computer lab, and Iâm like, âIâm going to check to see what happened.â And I log in, still in kind of a depressed state, and I open my email, and then my email though, I see order notification from paypal, order notification paypall. Boom, boom, boom, boom, probably 20-25 orders had come through for like $10 apiece through paypal. I was like, âOh my gosh, it worked. I gotta go create a product.â
So I had to go back and figure out what I sold and make something to send out to these people. And I realized at the time, what I did was wrong, I didnât understand the ethics or how to do it, I did it wrong. But what happened was right. The goal was to get a platform, an email list, to get something. And that was the whole secret to the game.
So after that was done, I went and found a new internet service provider and I spent the next year of my life trying to figure out how I build a list the right way, where itâs not going to end me up in jail. Thereâs got to be a way to do it.
What I learned is basically this process. I can buy ads, I gotta send them somewhere to join my list, or I can go work my, do things, and get people to come to my website and give me the email, but that was the goal. So I started focusing from that point forward on building my email list. That was my core focus, building a list, building a list, building a list. And I started growing it.
Itâs been interesting, that concept of list building became my whole life. I started looking, over the last 15 years Iâve been doing this, Iâve see a lot of people who have built huge companies, are no longer in our industry. Now back at their day jobs trying to survive. And Iâve seen things over and over and over again.
How many of you guys remember back in the day when Adsense first started and it was like Christmas every day? A couple of you guys. So let me paint this picture. So this is in the middle of me trying to build my list, my first mentor, his name is Mark Joyner. Heâs like, âFocus on a list, focus on a list.â Iâm like, focusing on a list. And all the sudden this shiny object pops out of nowhere called adsense, and what adsense was back in the day, you could buy this software for $97, there was a couple of them, Traffic Equalizer, there were probably a dozen or so that ended up coming out.
You load up software on the computer, you click a button, it would go out there and it would pick a keyword, so letâs say whatever, it would find a keyword that people were paying a lot of money on, go to the internet, scrape all the sites that have written about that, pull them in, and then you publish a site and have like 8,000 pages in like a minute.
And then it would put ads in all the site, and because of the way it structured the pages, Google would instantly index it and you started making money. It was like the easiest, most stupid way to make money. We had teams of people in the Philippians, like 30-40 people, that all day sat there and build another site, build another site, build another site. Just cranking out sites like crazy. Not me, a lot of my friends, they built these assembly lines of people doing that.
I had friends making a half a million bucks a month or more just cranking out crappy little sites. And it was amazing for about a year, year and a half. And so Iâm watching all these people make so much money, and Iâm over here building a list, building a list, and stressing out because Iâm seeing all these people make all this money. Iâm like, âIâm just going to do that, thatâs easy. It takes no effort at all.â And my mentor, Mark, was luckily like, âNo dude, focus on building a list, this will go away.â Iâm like, âNo, you donât understand. This is the greatest thing in the world. Itâs going to changeâŠ.$500,000 a month..â How many of you guys would that radically shift your life right now?
Yeah, I was just like, âAnd theyâre doing nothing, providing zero value to the world. Theyâre just clicking a button over and over and over again. I could get a million button clickers. Iâm going to be the first adsense billionaire.â And heâs like, âNo, build a list, build a list.â And Iâm like torn. And luckily for me, Iâm really coachable. So Iâm like, âFine, Iâll build the stupid list.â So Iâm doing this, and sure enough about a year later, boom, the algorithm changed, Google found all the software that was building the sites, deindexed every single page, and I had friends go from half a million dollars a month to zero over night. I was like, âOh my gosh.â But guess what I had? I had been building my list and it didnât affect me.
Now anyone who knows my story, who here thinks that Iâve always done everything right in my business? Only Dave. I havenât. So what happened is I built my company up really, really big, and then I bankrupted it almost. Luckily both times I didnât. The second time I built it even bigger and then I almost bankrupted, Iâve told those stories before, at Funnel Hacking Live.
But whatâs interesting, the thing that got me through the ups and the downs every single time was this platform Iâd built, this list. I got to the point where everything is collapsing around me, I could still send emails to my list and people would buy because we have a relationship, and it kept us through the down times. So when you do this and build a platform, itâs the key.
I still see today, itâs unfortunate, I still see today people in our industry who get the next object where theyâre like, âOh, I can do this thing.â And they start buying Facebook ads to sell this, and doing this, and doing things like that, but theyâre not focusing on the fundamentals. The fundamentals are what will protect you over the long haul. The reason why Iâm still in business 15 years later, and a lot of the people I know that have made a crap ton of money along the way arenât, is because this has been my focal point, building the platform, building the platform.
So why do you need a platform? The platform is the key for so many reasons. How many of you guys watch the Apprentice, back when it was still on? How many of you saw the season where Arsenio Hall was on the show? How many of you guys have no idea who Arsenio hall is? Okay, for the younger generation, Arsenio Hall was a dude that had his own late night show. Heâd come out and get everyone excited and be like, âwoo, woo, woo.â And get everyone pumped up, and he was the man on late night for, I donât know, a decade or so.
So then his show got cut, and then heâs like normal Arsenio Hall, no one heard from him, and then 20 years later he pops up on Celebrity Apprentice because at one time he was a celebrity apparently. It was fascinating, theyâre on celebrity apprentice, competing with all these other celebrities. And there was this one task that was like a fund raising task, where they had to go and raise money.
So theyâre all going through and trying to raise money for their charities and Arsenio is back there, heâs got his rolodex of people and heâs calling the first person, the second person, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and whatâs interesting, while all the other celebrities were doing deals, Arsenio couldnât get anyone to return his call, couldnât get anyone to pick up the call or anything. And it shows him that night, sitting on the couch and heâs all depressed and frustrated and upset, and theyâre talking about it. And theyâre like, âdude, youâre Arsenio Hall, how come you canât get any money?â Heâs like, âI donât know man. When I had my own show, everybody returned my call and now nobody will.â
And when I heard that, I was like, âOh my gosh, what a lesson that is.â Some of you guys are starting the dream 100 right now at the very beginning, you donât have this platform, and itâs tough. Itâs tough initially to get people to return your calls, to say yes, to look at your vox, whatever those things are. At first itâs hard right.
But when you have a platform, everyone returns your call. When I first met Tony Robbins back in the day, my platform was little tiny. I even became friends with Tony, we hung out for 10 years, and Tony never promoted me, we were just kind of, I got to know him, a couple of times we hung out and helped consult him, that was while my platform got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Last year we launched Expert Secrets book, I was like, âHey Tony, will you help me promote this book?â And Tonyâs like, âRussellâs platform is huge. Yes, Russell. I would love to.â
There are few people in our world right now that I couldnât pick up the phone and be like, âHey can you help me do this deal?â Because they know my platform is huge. And because of that, they will say yes. So the dream 100 gets better and better and better as you build your platform. At first itâs going to be more difficult, but as you focus on this building your platform, it becomes easier and easier and easier, because the bigger your platform is, the more likely people are to return your call.
So this should be the focus, again, if I come back to this. Everything you focus on is this, traffic you control, buying ads, traffic I earn, earning ads and weâre going to go deeper into this in a minute, but the goal of both of those is to turn it into your own platform.
Now platform can mean a lot of things. When I got started, all a platform was, was your email list. I still think focusing on email is one of the most important things because if an email service provider shuts you down you can move your email list to another. So thatâs an asset that can follow you.
But your platform is also different things like, how many of you guys are on Instagram right now? Your Instagram following is a platform. How many of you guys have a podcast right now? Your podcast listeners are a following. How many of you guys have a Facebook following? YouTube subscribers? All those things are platforms. So what Iâm going to be talking about, and Iâm going to break this down, the platform doesnât always have to be one thing. In fact, usually thereâs a platform on each of these different channels that weâre going to talk about. And you should be building more than one.
But the biggest problem I have with other ones is like, the reason I like email so much is because, again, if you get shut down you can move it. If Facebook shuts you down, youâre done. If YouTube shuts down your channel because you did something aggressive, you canât do much about it. So always focusing on email is one, but then a secondary and more as we go through is a big piece of it. So thatâs the key, building your platform.
Alright, so thatâs the first step here. Step number two, so now that you have got this stuff figured out, and Iâm going to go deeper into this. All these things will kind of layer upon each other and the end will be this beautiful picture like, oh crap, thatâs what it is. This is so much easier than I thought.
Okay, so this is the first part. What I want to do, I want to kind of, before we go deep back into this part right here, I want to go deeper on this right here. So you have your own platform, what most people donât think through, all theyâre thinking about is themselves initially. Like, Iâm going to build a platform, have a big email list, a big podcast, a big whatever⊠Thatâs our focus, because thatâs who we are as entrepreneurs. We like significance, we want a big, huge following.
But what I wish I would have done, from day number one when I first got started in this business is spend more time thinking about the person. Who do I actually want on my list? If you read the Dotcom Secrets book, the very introduction in here I talk about you finding your dream customer. I talked about for me, I had 5 or 6 years in my business and one day I woke up and I was depressed. I was so upset, I wished, I remember sitting there in bed, laying there thinking, âI wish I had a boss so they could fire me, so I could separate myself from my customers.â But unfortunately I had built a company, I had built a platform, but the people who were in my platform were not people who I wanted to serve every single day, and it can be depressing. I promise you, if you build the wrong platform, it can be really, really frustrating when you show up one day and youâre like, âI hate my customers.â
How many of you guys have ever hated your customers before? So many of you. Good, Iâm glad Iâm the only one. Itâs tough. If you donât think through who is my dream customer ahead of time, youâre going to wake up one day with a customer that you hate. So I want you thinking like, who is my dream customer? Who is that person Iâm trying to serve?
So what I want to do, I want to talk about your dream customerâs journey. So who is my dream customer? I want to understand their journey. So the first thing Iâm going to do, Iâm gonna draw a picture here. So this is your dream customer. How many of you guys know who your dream customer is in your mind? Youâre like, âI know exactly who that person is.â If you donât, I encourage you. People are like, âUh, I want to serve awesome people.â Spend time actually thinking through this. Who do I actually want to serve? Who is that person? What do they look like? What are their fears? What are they excited about? What is the pain that they are trying to get away from, and what is the pleasure theyâre trying to move towards?
If you ever studied NLP you learn a really cool thing about the human mind. All humans are doing one of two things, number one theyâre trying to move away from pain, and number two they try to move towards pleasure. And whatâs interesting, most people are more dominant on one or the other.
Iâm curious, how many of you guys make most of your core decision because youâre trying to move away from pain in your life? Youâre trying to lose weight so youâre moving away from pain in that. You want to make money here because you want to get rid of your boss. Youâre in pain and you want to move away from pain. How many of you guys make most of your decisions based on moving away from pain?
Now the other side, you make choices like, Iâm moving towards pleasure. I want that nice car. I want to have six pack abs for the girls. I want to have all these things like that. How many of you guys make your choices moving towards pleasure? Interesting, itâs like 50/50 in this room.
Typically, what I find in an entrepreneurial room, most entrepreneurs make their choices towards pleasure, not all but most of them do. Whereas in the real world, most humans make their decisions moving away from pain. But regardless, you as someone who is going to be serving this dream customer, you have to know what those things are. What is the pain theyâre trying to get out of? You have to think about that and figure it out. What is that pain theyâre trying to get out of?
If you donât know what that is, itâs going to be really hard for you to serve them. The second thing is like, whatâs the pleasure theyâre trying to move towards? What is it that they actually want? Whatâs that thing that, the biggest desires they have? You have to know that, you have to know everything about that with your dream customer.
The next thing I want you guys to think about and this is going to come into a lot of the dream 100 stuff here in a minute. If you draw a timeline of your dream customerâs life, this is all the stuff that theyâre dealing with before you come to them, and this is all the stuff theyâre dealing with after.
So as I start building out my dream 100 list, I look at my customer and Iâm like, letâs say for me, I sell funnels. Do you guys know thatâs what I sell? Okay, so thatâs what I sell, so my dream customer, they need a funnel. But what do they need before they need a funnel? Most people more and more are like, âI need a funnel.â But what do they need before they need a funnel. Before they need a funnel they need, so Iâm thinking about whatâs the thing they need before they get my funnel? And what do they need before that, and before that, and before that? Iâm taking them backwards on this journey.
So if theyâre going to get a funnel, before they get a funnel they probably need a business maybe. Somebody here got that they needed a business. Maybe they needed a logo, they need branding, they needâŠ..thereâs probably things that happened before they come to me and theyâre ready for me.
And then after theyâve got a funnel, what are things they need after they have a funnel? They might need traffic, they might need graphic design, they have other things afterwards. So I look at this customer journey, whereâs my customer at? So this is the first phase. How many of you guys have ever thought about this before?
Jay Abraham taught me this initially, he said, âLook, if youâre trying to find joint venture partners, or dream 100, the first thing you got to think about is will your product or your service fit in the timeline of your dream customer? And you gotta figure out what are all the services they need before they come to you? And what are all the services they need after they come to you?â
When we identify that, we know exactly who your partners are, right? So if I go to somebody else who is selling funnel software, which is like right here, which is where most people go. If Iâm selling weight loss product, why would they promote my weight loss product if they have one too? They probably wonât because theyâre selling the same thing. Youâve got to go on this customer journey prior to that, before they wanted weight loss, what else did they get? What did they need? Maybe they had high blood pressure, oh my gosh, if they have high blood pressure, maybe I could dream 100 all the people who have a list with high blood pressure, because thatâs something they need before they lose weight.
So Iâm looking at this customer journey, like what are the things that are happening before they come to me? And the things that happen after? Because thatâs where youâre going to fit in. Your dream 100 partners are going to be better here and here probably, than the other place away.
Alright guys, thank you for listening to the first of the three parts of my presentation at Dream 100 Con. I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully itâs getting the wheels in your head spinning about traffic and kind of how traffic works. Tomorrow I will give you guys part two. Thanks so much and weâll see you guys tomorrow.
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Would you rather be like Conor McGregor or Kyle Snyder?âŠ
On todayâs episode Russell talks about using your platform in a positive or negative way. He touches on two recent examples, and how they were different. Listen here to find out the differences:
How a recent televised fighting match went and why Russell thinks the two men involved used their platforms in the wrong way. How Kyle Snider was able to be in a similar situation at the recent Wrestling World Tournament, but used his platform for good. And why itâs important to always use your platform in a positive way, and be a good role model for others.So listen below to find out how Russell plans to always use his platform as a way to inspire others.
---Transcript---
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I want to share with you guys something really, really cool today.
Alright, welcome back. So I am actually in the process right now of getting packed for the Traffic Secrets event, which is happening tomorrow. So Iâm mostly done, I have to pack real quick and then Iâm heading in. Iâve probably got 2 or 3 more hours at the office before the plane takes off. I gotta finish a couple more sketches and get my slides put together and then the party begins. So for those who are going to be there, Iâm excited to hang out with you and share with you basically 15 years of traffic stuff.
And the cool thing about this presentation, this book, itâs not like, âLet me teach you how to run Facebook ads.â Because I honestly feel like thereâs a storm coming and things are shifting. So Iâm trying to get us as a community prepared for when Zuckerberg decides he doesnât like us anymore. Because I guarantee you, itâs going to happen. Iâve seen it too many times over the years.
And whatâs been interesting, Iâve watched over 15 years and why have we stuck around? Why have we been relevant versus all the other companies that have gone by the wayside during the ups and the downs and the network changes? And the reason is because of what Iâm teaching at the event. How I view traffic, how we study it, how we focus on it, how we apply it, and how we implement it is different.
So itâs not going to be like, âHereâs how to run Facebook ads. Hereâs how to do interest targeting. Hereâs how to doâŠâ itâs going to be bigger. Itâs going to be understanding the psychology and the strategy behind traffic. And I think itâs going to be special. So thatâs what Iâm pumped about. And for those who arenât at the event, you have to wait til next September to read the book. Iâm so sorry.
I have to have to book done by May 1st, to have to the publisher to be able to launch it in September. So thatâs the process. This is me testing my material, teaching it in front of a live studio audience before we go and actually create the whole thing, so itâs going to be fun.
Anywho, as I was packing the morning, some of you guys know, some of my wrestling friends, that the wrestling world tournament has been happening this week, which is the equivalent of the Olympics in an off year. So the Olympics are every four years, so the other three years they have a world tournament, which is pretty much the same thing as the Olympics. Itâs a big deal and itâs coming on the backside of, and I want to share this just for contrast, but itâs the backside of the Mayweather, not Mayweather, the Connor Mcgregor fight that just happened. Where he fought against a wrestler, who used to fight bears in Russia, and Mayweather obviously got jacked pretty quickly.
And the only thing Iâm going to touch upon, because I actually enjoyed the fight, I enjoyed the antics afterward, with the Russian jumping into the stands and beating up everybody, and then the people in the stands jumping in. Not going to lie, really enjoyed that. I had a fun time watching it over and over and over again.
But it was interesting, you watch both those competitors, when all is said and done, how they use their platform, and this is the moral of this episode that I want to share with you. How do they use their platform? Both of them used their platform, not in a positive way. Prefight, post fight, everything has just been this chaos and I donât know about you, but itâs dark and it doesnât feel good.
I mean itâs fun, this is the internal struggle in Russellâs head where Iâm like, âI love this drama, I love the fact that he jumped into the audience and started beating everybody up.â So much fun right. But man, what a horrible role model for our kids, for people that we care about. Itâs insane.
So that was what happened like a month ago or whenever it was. Now I want to contrast that with something amazing that I saw this morning. So the wrestling world tournament was happening and last year America came into the world tournament and we freaking crushed everyone. We beat Russia, it was amazing. This year, and Russia is always likeâŠ.itâs Russia and America, thatâs the two best wrestling teams. And it came back and Russia actually ended up winning the team title this year, it was close though. It was really close. Some amazing matches.
My man, Jordan Burrows, whoâs like my wrestling hero right now, who he won the Olympics in London, heâs won the world titles and he was on trackâŠif he would have won this world I think he would have been tied for the most world championships ever in American history. He lost and took third, which was heartbreaking for me. But man, he used his platform for good.
When he got done he talked about, he justâŠ.a positiveâŠ.heâs an amazing human right. And then a couple other matches, this is just forâŠ.some of you guys donât care about this. But for the wrestlers out there, insane. David Taylor went in there and won his first world title, and a tech followed the guy into finals. Tech means you beat them by so many points they stop the match because you beat them so bad. So he came in with a mission, just thrashed everyone.
Kyle Day came in and went through the tournament and won his first world title and not a single person scored on him. Not a single person scored on him the entire tournament, insane. And then Jayden CoxâŠ.anyway, it was amazing. Some really good tournaments.
But what I wanted to talk about, because this is what I want to share with you guys, and this is the point of todayâs podcast. Yesterday in the finals, there was a guy named Kyle Snider, and Kyle as an 18 year old won the world tournament, which is insane, unheard of. Then the next year, he wins the Olympics, and then the next year wins the world title. And then last year, wins the world title again, but to win the world title he ends up going against this guy who, the guy is insane. I could tell you stories about this guy, but he wasnât supposed to win. I think the guy came down in weight class or something because he wanted to beat Snider.
The dude is probably the toughest human being on earth right now. And him and Snider meet in the finals, and young kid Snider, who is like a farm boy, goes and beats this Russian dude, who he should not have beat. I donât know, it was just insane. And it was crazy. So that was the big thing last year, which was amazing.
So this year, obviously the Russians, they just want to beat Snider. Thatâs their whole goal in life. So it was kind of like, it reminded me a little bit of like of a Connor McGregor fight with all the build up and the talking and all that kind of stuff. And Snider is not really a trash talker, but man, the Russians were. Talking all this trash, that they were going to beat him.
And then they get to the world title and theyâre on either sides of the brackets and they go together and finally they meet in the finals and it was the most anticipated match ever. Everyone in the world who cares about wrestling is watching this match because they want to see Snider versus this Russian dude.
The y go out there and finally yesterday it happened, and they go to start wrestling, and the Russian dude, very, very quickly throws Snider to his back and pins him. The match lasts like, I donât know, maybe 30 seconds max. Not even that, I donât think.
And me and America and all the wrestlers watching this, just sick to our stomach. Like, âOh my gosh, he lost.â So youâre wondering, whatâs going to happen? Whatâs going to transpire? For the last 24 hours Iâve been sick to my stomach for him, just knowing what heâs gone through, what he prepared for, all this stuff. And then this morning I open instagram and the first thing I see is a big picture of Kyle Snider doing a quick interview. Iâm going to actually play the interview for you, Iâm going to have my brother splice it in here, because I want you to hear what he said. And then after that Iâm going to come back and then comment on it.
âWins or loses donât define me. I mean, I love wrestling and itâs a big part of my life, but Iâm not defined by it. Itâs more defined by my faith in Jesus. Thatâs whatâŠno matter what happens to me on the mat, nothing really changes. Whether I win or whether I lose, thereâs not a big change in my life, the way that I view myself, the way that I view other people. So Iâm thankful for everything, Iâm thankful for the gifts that I have and the opportunity to compete. Godâs given me the wins that Iâve had, the great wins that weâve seen, and Godâs also given me loses, and Iâll take both of them. You know? Whatever he wants to give, Iâll learn from it and thatâs the deal.â
Alright, was that amazing? He could have said so many things. He could have given excuses why he lost, he could have given an excuse about why he got caught and thrown. He could have given excuses, he could have blamed people, he could have been angry, he could have trash talked, he could have done anything. He has this platform, heâs in front of the entire world right now and has the opportunity to say something. And how does he use his platform?
He uses it praise God, he uses it to talk about what heâs learning. Heâs using it as a platform for other people to learn from their loses. So, so, so powerful.
So Iâm sharing this with you guys for, the main reason is because all of you have a platform, or you are building a platform. And when you have a platform there becomes a responsibility. How are you going to use that? How are you going to help people? How are you going to, when you have the shot, when youâre on stage and everyone in the world is listening to you and youâve got this split second, how are you going to use your platform?
I want you to think about that. Look at what happened with Connor McGregor and that other dude, how they used their platform, super negatively. I donât want my kids to see that. Iâm going to watch it because I like the train wreck, but man, theyâre not role models. I donât want to be like them, I donât want my kids to be like them, I donât want things like that.
Then you look at Kyle Snider, and man, I want my kids to hear from someone like that. I want them to have him as their role model. He used his platform to get his message out there, to talk about God. Every time Iâve seen him on any interview, any anything, in spots where he could have talked about himself or talked about how great he is, or talking about whatever, he always uses it to talk about God. To glorify someone besides himself, to talk through those type of things. You know what I mean?
So when you watch that, itâs powerful. So I just wanted to put it in your mind, you guys are each going to have an opportunity and a shot where youâre going to have your own platform, the question is how youâre going to use that platform. I hope that you guys have been watching because I consciously think about this.
I realize I have been given a gift from God where I have a platform, I have a voice, I have people who listen to me, I have the ability to persuade and to talk and to share and to motivate and inspire and lead people in directions. And I believe that with great power comes great responsibility. Thank you, Spider Man.
But itâs true, how are you guys using your platform? I want to be someone, that when I die someday, everyone says, âMan, he used his platform for good. He was blessed with this amazing platform to be able to influence people, but he influenced them for good. He inspired people, he helped people to want to be better. He helped people to live to their full potential. He helped people to transform their lives. He helped people through charity and through other things, to help other people and he inspired me to want to do that.â
Thatâs the legacy I want to live. Thatâs the platform that I want to create. I just want you guys to be thoughtful of that, to consciously think about that as youâre building your platform. As your platform grows, how are you going to use it? Because I 100% believe that if you have good intentions with your platform and youâre using it in the right way, God, the universe, whatever you want to say, whatever you guys call it for yourselves will bless you and will multiply that.
And just make sure, because itâs a sacred responsibility weâre all given. So make sure you use it. Look at what Kyle Snider did in a time when he could have been negative and he could have complained and he could have had a million excuses. And rightfully so, if I would have been the one in that platform I would be like, âOh, he caught me. It sucks, but Iâm going to take him out next time. Heâs going down.â Instead he used it to glorify God. He used it as a learning lesson for himself. And used it as a way to help transform other peopleâs thoughts and minds. Because so many people, me included, sick to my stomach and ready to go fly to Russian and try to beat this guy if he wasnât so tough. You know what I mean?
But instead of being like, âYes, letâs get revenge.â Itâs like, âHey God gives me wins, and God gives me loses, and Iâm grateful for both because I learn from both.â That little message, how many people will that inspire? How does that shift your thoughts? How does that shift my thoughts? Oh my gosh. Thereâs times all the time where I fail. And Iâm not typically thinking, âOkay, God gave me this loss. How am I going to learn from it?â But thatâs how he looked at it and he used his platform to share that with other people because, now look Iâm sharing this. Weâre going to get 20, 30, 40 thousand people to download this podcast episode and listen to it. That ripple effect of him in the moment using his platform for good, how many more people will that affect?
So for you, itâs the same thing. How are you using your platform? Use it for positive stuff, donât use it for negative. If you do that, you will be blessed and you will be able to change and affect more peopleâs lives.
So there you go guys, thatâs all I got. Appreciate you all. I gotta hurry up and get packed because I am already behind the clock. I just had to drop this with you guys and share it because I was excited. Thanks so much for everything, all of you guys. You should quit watching MMA, quit watching basketball, football, golf, nascar, and start watching wrestling. Thereâs amazing stuff happening. Look at these role models. Finally a sport with amazing role models. Iâll leave it there.
There are good role models in every sport, but the best ones are in wrestling. Alright, appreciate you guys, have an amazing day. And those of you guys who will be at Phoenix for the Traffic Secrets event, I will see you soon. Oh and if you got any value from this episode please take a snapshot of it on your phone, go post it on Facebook, Instagram, and tag me so I can see that youâre listening, and do hashtag Marketing Secrets. And if youâre using those other platforms, Twitter, Pinterest, feel free to do it there too. I donât know how it works on those ones, but Iâm sure itâs the same thing. Appreciate you guys letting people know about this podcast. And weâll talk soon.
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I donât want to spoil the surprise, but at the end of this I drop a bomb thatâll change how you run ads forever.
On this episode Russell talks about his experiences with Flip Hacking Live, his startup interview at the Dry Bar Comedy Club and why itâs important to get b-roll footage. Here are some of the awesome things he talks about in this episode:
What kind of mistakes he made at Justin and Tara Williams event, and what he would do differently. Why if Russell could start over, he would be a specialist rather than a generalist. And why itâs so important to have tons of b-roll footage when you are ready to launch your product.So listen here to find out how Russell gets tons of b-roll footage, and why, in some ways, itâs better to be a specialist.
---Transcript---
Hey, hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. It is a late night drive and Iâm excited to be hanging out with you.
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing amazing today or tonight or whenever youâre listening to this. It is 11:00 at night and I am driving back to my house and I just want to recap the last couple of days of my life because theyâve been a little bit nuts-o, but exciting and hopefully thereâs some cool lessons that will come for you guys from this.
So number one, last week I had a chance to go speak at Justin Williams Flip Hacking Live, which is very similar to Funnel Hacking Live, he may have funnel hacked me and then just changed it from Funnel to Flip. But I will allow him to do that because heâs awesome. So we did that, and then I had a chance to go speak to a whole bunch of real estate investors, which is a different audience, obviously all entrepreneurs I believe can use Clickfunnels. This is a group of people who had never done funnels at all.
It was interesting because I took my normal presentation and I tweaked it and modified it a lot to be better for them, but I still made some errors in what I did. Anyway, it was an interesting learning experience. We still sold well, but I definitely made some mistakes and learned some cool things that I would go back andâŠ.I think the biggest takeaway from that presentation and from speaking at that event that I think would be good for you guys is looking at how you position your teaching. Are you a generalist or are you a specialist?
You know, for me with Clickfunnels and my role in this whole game, I have to be a generalist. Iâm teaching marketing and funnels for all types of businesses. Thereâs a lot of my friends who teach one funnel type; they teach just tripwire funnels, or just high ticket funnels, and they go deep on that and they love it. And I envy them because Iâm like, âah, if I could just do that.â Or theyâre just teaching funnels for dentists, or just teaching funnels for chiropractors, like very specific with specialist. Iâm jealous of that because first off, I think itâs easier because you can, itâs not theoretical, you can be like, âThis is the actual funnel that works amazingly well. This is the one you should do, this is the ad you should run.â
To be a specialist you can charge more because of that. Whereas all my teaching has to be general, or âHereâs this concept, and hereâs how you use it here, and hereâs how you can use it here and here and here.â And itâs way harder.
In fact, I remember when I was starting my career, I remember listening to Dan Kennedy and somebody asked him one time like if was to start his career over again from scratch, what he would do different. And he was like, âYou know, Iâm a generalist, Iâm teaching magnetic marketing to every type of business. If I was to start over, I would specialize in a certain type of business and focus there.â and I was like, âWhatever thatâs dumb. I want to teach everybody because itâs the greatest thing in the world.â I should have headed that advice. Iâm glad I didnât because itâs probably, hopefully serving some of you guys. But man, itâs a lot harder to weave in 10 different markets into every presentation I do, and then each market has like 50 submarkets. Anyway, itâs intense.
But that was my cardinal sin I made at Justin and Taraâs event. I did niche it down to be more specific for them, but not enough. And I didnât, Justin wanted to do a call with me ahead of time and I was like, âNo, I got it dude. Iâm good.â And I should have done a call because I would have understood, just kind of a better starting point.
So the lesson for you, if youâre going to sell to anybody, make sure you get on the phone with the promoter, the person whoâs event it is, and pick their brain and really, really, really understand the customer and how to serve them. Iâve done that in the past and for some reason I got cocky and arrogant and didnât do it this time, and I regret. I think I ended up closing between, we did a first session and then a re-pitch, about 20% of the room. I think I should have gotten closer to 30-40% had I have customized that presentation better and made it very, very specific like, âOkay, you guys as real estate investors, this is the exact funnel I would use.â As opposed to how I did it, which was kind of more general, âYou could do this or you could do this or you could do this.â And trying to weave together things.
So thereâs the rule, if you are a generalist and youâre speaking to a certain market, shift your message to becoming a specialist and youâll do way better. If youâre picking a market right now, specialize. Okay, thatâs number one.
So then when that event was done, then we jumped in a plane and we flew to Salt Lake, and then we drove down to Provo because we were putting on our own little show. And so Iâm going to tell you what happened and then Iâm going to tell you why we did it, because I thinkâŠ.in fact, it was funny, in our last inner circle meeting I was talking about how weâre doing this big event and I was like, âYou know, one of my main roles is I want to get a whole bunch of b-roll of the cool location, cool interview. I want to get sound bites and sound clips and all sorts of stuff, Iâm going to look for more b-roll.â
Then Brian Burt, who is a super cool guy at our inner circle, he was like, âRussell you have the most epic b-roll on planet earth, the last thing you need in your world is more b-roll.â Yet we spent 100 grand, I donât know how much we spent on this event, with the sole purpose of getting more b-roll. So that should be a lesson for all you guys.
What we did is we rented out this place called the Dry Bar Comedy Club in Provo. Itâs a bar, but itâs a dry bar so thereâs no alcohol. But it looks really, the location is amazing. Thereâs different sets you can do, thereâs the stage and the light, and the ambiance, and it just looks insanely cool. So I saw, in fact the back story, the Harmon Brothers, some of the other Harmon brothers that own a company called Vid Angel, if you donât know what that is, itâs an app on your Roku that will edit videos for you, so it makes rated R movies PG and stuff and itâs awesome.
But then they got in a big fight with Disney and all these people, and a big legal battle. So during the legal battle instead of editing movies, they started streaming their own content at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, which was comedians who had to do clean comedy, which was awesome. So we were watching all this comedy and what was cool is we started seeing these sets, and I was like, âThatâs such a cool location, I want to an event somewhere like that.â So thatâs thought number one in my head.
Then I was listening to Andrew Warner, who he wrote the Mixergy podcast and heâs the most fascinating interviewer you will ever meet. If you donât listen to Mixergy podcast, go listen to it for the sole purpose of listening to how Andrew interviews people. So cool.
And Iâm listening to one of his interviews, and he normally does it in his studio, on set. And this one time he was interviewing this one entrepreneur at a camp around a camp fire, and he did this whole interview around a camp fire. And I was like, âOh, I want to be interviewed around a camp fire, telling the Clickfunnels startup story, that would be so cool.â And I was like, âWait a minute, what if we did it at the Dry Bar Comedy Club?â and then it became a thing, I messaged Andrew and the next thing we know, six weeks later weâre at the Dry Bar Comedy Club.
Then Iâm like, âHow do we get people there, we gotta make it fun.â So then I was like, âWhat if we had JP Sears come and do comedy at it?â So messaged JP and Iâm like, âWhat would it take for you to just make fun of me for 30 minutes before this interview so it kind of loosens up the crowd?â Because itâs like, I donât know, I thought it would be good because sometimes interviews are tough if someoneâs having success because youâre like, âOh screw that person. Theyâre having tons of success.â So I was like, âIt would be more fun if people make fun of me for a while, then itâs like,â I donât know, with people, itâs the whole reason why we share our back story, and share the vulnerable moments, because if youâre vulnerable with people and share the times that you struggled, and youâve had the big losses, then when you have the wins people celebrate with you as opposed to like, being annoyed with you.
So I was like, letâs make fun of me, so that way people will be more likely to have a vested interest in my journey and be interested in this whole Clickfunnels start up story. So luckily JP said yes, so when all was said and done, we had JP come on and make fun of me for like 30 minutes, then he did some of his stand up comedy for the next 15-20 minutes, which was awesome. And then we came up onstage and Andrew interviewed me for 2 hours about the Clickfunnels start up story. It was amazing, and Iâm sure someday weâll release the footage of it.
But we got tons of b-roll and thereâs so many sound bites and clips, it was just super, super awesome. So I wanted to kind of share that with you guys because of all the ordeal we went through to be able to get the b-roll.
So think about that, if you guys are creating content, like you sitting and podcasting is good, but getting the b-roll is even more important. And Iâm going to caveat, share more of that here in a few minutes because it kind of goes to the next level.
So that was the Dry Bar Comedy club, we had a great time, it was a really special evening, I loved it. And I think it was helpful for people and for me it meant a lot. Andrew did an amazing job, JP did an amazing job, my whole team did an amazing job putting it together, and it was awesome.
So then we flew home, Sunday I got home. And then whatâs crazy, tomorrow is Wednesday and Iâm flying to Arizona to go and speak for two days on the Traffic Secrets book, which is a book I havenât written yet. But I had all day Monday and Tuesday to sit down in front of, with my brain and a huge, white pad of paper and start doodling out all the sketches to teach all the core concepts Iâve been thinking about for the last year to put inside Expert Secrets. And Doodling and putting them in the right order, organizing and reorganizing them.
I was up all day Monday doing it. And then I went in at 9:00 at night and I was still stressing out, and still working on it. And then Stephen Larsen messaged me and I was like, âWhat would it take for you to come into the office?â So he came into the office and we were there and then I was instagraming me and Stephen in there like mapping out things and having so much fun. And then Dave was about to go to bed at night, and he went and checked Insta-stories and saw me and Stephen there so he jumped in his car, jumped out of bed, put his clothes on and drove over to the office and weâre all sitting there brainstorming and up til, being there until 2:00 in the morning, which is lame because I had to lift weights at 5:30. So I had 3 hours of sleep last night, which reminds me of why Iâm so tired right now.
I digress, so Iâm telling you this because I spent two days, got all the doodles done and tomorrow Iâm flying out to go present these at a live event, partially because Iâm looking for b-roll footage at the live event to be able to use in the promotional video of the book someday. And then one of the guys who works with us doing video stuff, his name is Blake, he was in town and he saw the insta-stories and heâs like, âOh, I wish would have known, I would have come last night and filmed all the b-roll of you guys mapping this stuff out.â And I was like, âWhat if we did it tonight.â And he was like, âYes.â
So where Iâm coming home from right now, we were back at the office and we spent two hours just filming b-roll of everything we did yesterday. Literally, me re-drawing out the drawings I did, me re-laying out the drawings, me walking around doing stuff, Blake taking videos from inside the office, outside the office, walking into the office, as many different spots and different places. And we spent two full hours just capturing b-roll to be able to use in a promotional video that we do in two years from now when we start selling the book.
So why am I sharing this with you guys? Because most of us arenât looking at this as the art that it is. I can have a video of me saying, âHey my new book Traffic Secrets came out, you should read it, itâs awesome.â Or I could capture the process of creating this thing and showing what happened behind the scenes and how it worked and what we had to go through and the pain and me up all night doodling and sketching these things out and laying out all over the whole floor, all these huge pads of paper. And then going to an event and onstage teaching it and explaining to people and trying to help them understand it. And then sitting down and actually write it.
And you actually get footage of you creating this thing, documenting yourself, documenting the journey. Then someday when you have the sales video to sell the thing, you have all this magic you can go back and use.
So I want just want to put it out there for you guys to start thinking about. As youâre doing cool stuff, donât just capture you making the content, capture you capturing the content. Get the b-roll, get somebody to, as youâre writing your book, âHey, can you get the video camera and like get some shots of me writing this book. Get some shots of me working on my perfect webinar. Get some shots of me at the gym losing weight because Iâm going to teach people to lose weight.â
All those things, they matter and they matter a lot. If you notice most of the videos we put out nowadays, itâs like 98% b-roll and thereâs a voice over storyline talking about something, but the b-roll is whatâs sucking you in the video and hooking you in. Pulling you from step one to step two, step three, step four, pulling you through the whole process.
Anyway, those are the fun things. We spent probably more time, 3 or 4 times more on the b-roll than we do on the video or the initial thing weâre shooting, you know what I mean. So think about that. So thatâs all I got.
I know this was kind of a random episode. We talked about Flip Hacking Live, Justin and Taraâs event, the difference between being a specialist and a generalist, and if you are a generalist and youâre speaking to a market, to flip into specialist mode and change your message because youâll sell more and youâll serve more, and if youâre choosing between a generalist and a specialist, become a specialist. Donât become the next Russell Brunson, Funnel Builder. The next Dan Kennedy, marketing guy. Become the funnel builder for whatever market, you know what I mean? Become a specialist.
Then we shifted over into the Dry Bar Comedy Club, JP Sears, Andrew Warner and then all the stuff we did tonight. And the emphasis on capturing the b-roll, capturing the story. We talked about documenting the journey and youâre doing that through podcasts and things like that, but man if you can get your camera out and film different pieces, even just getting your phone out and filming you doing different pieces, that stuff will be valuable someday. I promise you that.
I look back now that my kids are, my twins are turning 13 years old now. We didnât film, we didnât capture much stuff of them because we didnât have cameras back then and it wasnât as easy. And I look now and I have tons of footage of Norah and Aiden and stuff, but the earlier kids we have hardly any footage, and ugh, sick to my stomach. Iâm so grateful now that weâre capturing all this b-roll of everything weâre doing because we can go back into the archives and in 8 months from now when the book launches, and be like, âHereâs all the footage of when Russell was actually writing the book.â
How cool is it to have all that? And how many ways can we use that in the promotional videos and ads and other things, you know. If youâre launching your funnel and the last phase is you creating your sales video and youâre like, âWhat should we do for ads? Letâs think about an ad.â Then youâre missing the point. Youâre missing the magic.
The magic is while youâre creating this thing, you should be documenting every single piece of that, because that becomes your ad, that becomes the b-roll for the sales video, that becomes the storyline for all the things youâre doing.
So I hope that helps. Iâm going to go get some sleep because I have not slept enough, which you can probably tell. Some days my podcast is probably all over the place, on the days I havenât slept, which sounds like it might be today. So I apologize for that. Hopefully you got some value from this, appreciate you guys, thanks for listening. If you did get value, please take a snap shot on your phone right now, go over to Facebook or Instagram, tag me so I can see it and also hashtag Marketing Secrets, which would be really cool. I appreciate that. And with that said, thanks so much and Iâll talk to you guys tomorrow.
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Somedays it makes you question why youâre still staying up late at night and waking up early to serve the audience that you love.
On todayâs episode Russell talks about the mystery of why he continues to work so hard, even though the company would continue to thrive if he didnât. Here are some of the amazing things he goes over on this episode:
What Russell thinks the answer is to a question his wife asked about why he continues to get stressed out and work extra hard, despite the company continuing to be successful. Why Russell hates significance, but still needs it. And what are the two things that Russell sees as his legacy.So listen here to find out why Russell continues to work hard and go the extra mile for a company that would continue to grow and be successful even if he stopped working so hard.
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The secret trick I use to help my kids handle an entire day at school.
On todayâs episode Russell talks about listening to music on the way to school to get his kids excited about the day. Here are some of the amazing things in this episode:
Find out why listening to music on the way to school helps get Russellâs kids excited about school, so they wonât be miserable like he was when he was a kid. And why listening to a specific kind of music is the best and fastest way to get into the state you need to be in.So listen here to find out what music Russell listens to with his kids to get their energy levels high enough to make it through an entire school day.
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Whatâs up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now Iâm driving in the car withâŠ.
Norah: Me.
Russell: Whatâs your name?
Norah: Norah.
Russell: And weâre going to tell you guys something really, really cool.
Alright, so me and Norah just took the kids to school and dropped them off and itâs really fun. So Norah drives with us most mornings and we take the kids to the junior high. And I donât know about you but school wasnât my favorite thing. It was really hard and I didnât enjoy it very much.
So Iâve got this really special 5 minute drive everyday to take my kids to school, and during the 5 minute drive, I realize they are about to enter to probably the most miserable, depressing place on earth. I shouldnât say that out loud, but come on now, those of you guys who have been through school (which is all of us) itâs not like Disneyland, itâs not like a Funnel Hacking Live event. Itâs not like something exciting where youâre motivated and inspired and ready to change the world.
You go and youâre like waiting for the bell to ring so you can see your friends for two minutes before you go back into class again. So I figure Iâve got to give my kids the best chance to enter into school every single day in the most peak state possible.
So what we do, in case anyone who drives down this road with me is wondering, in fact I had a friend the other day, she said, âSometimes I pass you guys when youâre driving to school and it looks like you guys are having a disco party.â Which makes me want to get a disco ball in the Jeep. But basically we crank up the music, so today weâre listening to Bohemian Rhapsody and we start head banging, huh Norah.
And Norah is the cutest little head banger. When it gets to the awesome part, she starts head banging and kicking her feet and weâre all going crazy and weâre laughing and weâre singing, and weâre trying toâŠ.my goal is to get them in the best state possible so when they step out of the jeep and go into the school they are starting at the peak excitement for the day. And hopefully that will last all the way to wrestling practice at 3:30.
Anyway, the reason I wanted to share that with you guys is because music is powerful. Iâm not a big fan of listening to music all the time, I think a lot of people waste their lives just listening to music, when they could be listening to podcasts and learning, and all sorts of stuff. In fact, I read somewhere, Iâm going to misquote the facts, but it was like, âthe average person who listens to music all day make $50,000, and the average person who listens to podcasts all day is like $150,000 a year.â So youâll 3x your income just by listening to podcasts as opposed to music.
But there is a time and a place for music, and I think that the best time and place for music, and I feel bad I shouldnât say that because I do love music and I listen to it a lot, but the time itâs most efficient is before you are about to do something. Music has this magical, powerful effect to change your state. If you listen to a sad song, you can be sad instantly. You listen to a happy song, you can be happy instantly. A pump up song, whatever it is, music has the ability to change your state and shift your state faster than I think, anything else out there. Outside of maybe hardcore drugs, I donât know. Iâve never done that, so Iâm not sure but other than that music is like number two for dramatically shifting your state.
Norah: Daddy?
Russell: Yeah Norah?
Norah: Why did they turn off the waterfall?
Russell: I donât know. Norahâs wonder why they turned off, thereâs a waterfall when you go into our neighborhood and itâs turned off. Itâs because itâs too cold now Norah.
Anyway, so with my kids when Iâm trying to get them to peak state of excitement and energy and everything before they step through the doors of school, we use music and we use fun, exciting, high energy music. So we find our favorite thing, in fact, whoever is driving in the jeep and they sit in the front seat, gets to be the dj for the day, and they each get to pick the song they want.
And typically, itâs usually like a Greatest Showmanâs song, the Other Side is one of their favorites, or itâs Bohemian Rhapsody, or itâs Black Eyed Peas, something that gets them into high state, high excitement, high energy. And then we head bang and we sing, and we have so much fun, so the second they get out their energy level is super high.
Norah: DaddyâŠ.
Russell: Say hi guys. Want to say hi to everybody?
Norah: I like puppet shows.
Russell: Norah likes watching puppet shows. Her favorite thing to do is to go to YouTube and watch puppet shows, huh?
Anyway, I use it at the same time, when Iâm driving to the office.
Norah: and I sleep in mommyâs bed.
Russell: and she sleeps in mommyâs bed. You should sleep in Norahâs bed. No?
Anyway, I use music also when I know Iâm tired or like worn out. I donât want to do this thing, like lifting weights this morning. I didnât want to do it, so I come in and turn on the right music to get you in the right state to be able to handle it.
Days Iâm going to the office and Iâm like, âI donât want to be here, Iâm tired.â I use music to shift my state. Days when I know I need an extra boost of energy or excitement or motivation or whatever, I use music to shift my state and get me into that thing, so I can get out of myself what I need.
So thatâs how you use music strategically. So for you guys, I just want you thinking about that, when youâre about to enter somethingâŠâŠoh can you hear Norah singing?
Norah: (singing in background)
Russell: Oh, that makes me happy. You think about it in church, a lot of times too. The same thing, you use music to shift you into state, to be able to feel the spirit. You shift music to be able to dominate the day.
Anyway, so my message for you guys today is make different music tracks. I use Spotify, because itâs the easiest. I make Spotify tracks and they get me into the different states I need. If I want to be in a romantic state, Iâve got a Spotify track. If I want to be in a high energy state, Iâve got a track. If I want to be in a thoughtful state, a motivation, a meditative state, we use music to get ourselves in state quickly. So use music to shift your state to be able to accomplish what you guys need to do. So there you go.
Thatâs it, Iâm almost home. Norahâs singing, Iâm going to go sing the rest of the song with her. I appreciate you guys and weâll talk to you all soon.
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