The realities of isolation as an entrepreneur and what you can do to protect yourself. On this episode Russell talks about the different phases in entrepreneurship, and the isolation they bring. Here are some of the insightful things to listen for in today’s episode:

-- Why the loneliness that plagued Russell when he first got started being an entrepreneur has returned in recent months.

-- How Russell is trying to combat the loneliness he feels as CEO of his company.

-- And why it’s so important to find a community that can support you in your journey as an entrepreneur.

So listen here to find out why entrepreneurship brings isolation and how you can fight it.

So for me, what I was starting to do, and this is actually starting next week, which I’m excited for, is I’m looking at those things I used to miss the most and I’m trying to bring parts of those back. And obviously I can’t go 100% back to that because there’s other people doing the roles, plus you know, I’m in charge of the stuff that I’m in charge of. But I’m basically, every Monday when I get to the office working, I’m going to be working in the section where the funnel team is. So I can be out there, I can feel the energy, I can talk, I can share, I can train, I can get my ideas, I can be around that while I’m doing my stuff. As opposed to my little Russell office.

-- ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)

-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."

​-- Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."

-- ​Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m taking a quick break during my lunch at the inner circle meetings to share something really cool with you guys today, and I hope you enjoy it. So with that said let’s queue up the theme song, and I’ll be right back.

Hey everyone, this last two weeks have been, it’s been crazy. As you probably know, we have a lot of different coaching programs here at Clickfunnels. We have obviously, the free stuff, which is the podcast like you’re on right now and a whole bunch of other things. From there, we try to get people into the one funnel away challenge, and hopefully all of you guys have done that. If you haven’t gone through that process yet, go to OneFunnelAway.com, and after one funnel away challenge I try to get you to come to Funnel Hacking Live, where you get to experience this whole funnel hacking movement. And if you haven’t come to that yet, come to our next event, we’re going to do it once a year and it’s amazing. Go to FunnelHackingLive.com to get access to the event.

And then after Funnel Hacking Live, we try to get people into our Two Comma Club X coaching program. We help people to be able to win their own Two comma club award. And then after somebody has been in that program and they’ve been there for a while, they got to the point where their funnels made at least half a million dollars, then they get into our Two Comma Club X platinum group, which means they get to come to Boise and do masterminding with some of our coaches. And then from that group, out Two Comma Club X platinum group, is where we start picking out people for my inner circle.

My Inner circle has 100 people that are allowed to be in it at any given time. And then we’re also developing one more tier of our value ladder and it’s called the Category King Council. And it’s not live or launched yet, but it will be a really high end thing where people who are category kings in their market, have a chance to become part of that.

And that my friends, is the Clickfunnels value ladder. In case anyone is wondering, where are we taking you? What’s the purpose, what’s the point? So that’s it.

So my goal for you guys is to get tons of value from this podcast, from all the free stuff we put out there. So much so that you’re like, “I gotta dive deeper.” And hopefully you read a book or something. And then from there you go to the one funnel away challenge, and if we keep serving you, you’ll keep moving up our value ladder. And that’s how business should be.

If you read the Dotcom Secrets book, that’s what I talk about at the very beginning with the value ladder and how it works. And for me, I love it. I love it because higher on the value ladder people get, the more I have a chance to work directly with them.

So this last two weeks has been inner circle meeting. So basically I break the group down into three groups and they each come to Boise and we spend time in groups of 25-30 of us at a time, at 2 days each. So we did a group last week, last Monday, Tuesday, and then this Monday, Tuesday we did a group, and right now it’s Thursday, Friday and it’s my last group.

So I had a chance to spend time with all these entrepreneurs and we get together and have a chance to look at each other’s businesses and our lives and what we’re doing and anyway, it’s one of my most fulfilling parts of the business for sure. It’s interesting, people always ask me, “Russell, why are you still coaching? You make so much money off of Clickfunnels. Why are you still doing this other stuff?” And it’s funny because I told all the other groups on the last day, and I’ll tell these guys, this group, after lunch when we finish, the same thing. I tell them that for me, the mastermind group puts meaning to the numbers.

I’m looking at the Clickfunnels scoreboard right now, and as of today we have 89,014 active users, which is insane, right. But it’s just a scoreboard, and the people and the groups is what gives meaning to those numbers. Because while I can’t personally coach all 89,014 people, I would love to, I can try.

So again, this podcast I try to give to all of them, and more for free. And then from there we get people into the challenge and then funnel hacking live, and then coaching program, two comma club coaching program, then two comma club x platinum, then inner circle. So because I can’t work with all 89,000, the one’s I do have a chance to work one on one with, like the inner circle, they give meaning to those numbers. And I see each of their lives and the people that they’re effecting through their businesses and their products and their services, and it gives meaning for me and for our entire team.

So it’s been a lot of fun the last couple of weeks. So I’m excited for it to be done because I’m tired and it’s been a lot of work. But I’m also sad because I’m going to be losing all my friends and my connections and all these amazing entrepreneurs that I have a chance to serve and to work with.

Anyway, I’m leading that up because it’s been interesting in my business. I always tell people that entrepreneurship is the loneliest job in the world right. Because when you first get started it’s just you and your brain and usually the people around you are not supportive or they’re confused or they don’t understand it. Then as you go deeper into it, usually there’s even more lonely times because at first you’re not making money, you’re broke, you’re losing money. Then there’s the fear which causes more loneliness.

And some people never make it out of that trap. And it’s sad for me, that’s why I’ve spent so much time over the last decade and a half to build a community. We call ourselves funnel hackers, but I’m trying to build a community so that entrepreneurs who are trying to brave this journey alone don’t feel alone, which I know a lot of us do at times.

So there’s that, but then there’s this next phase, which is weird, where you start bringing on a team and it’s exciting at first because all the sudden there’s other people to talk to about what you’re doing and learning and they’re excited by it too. And they’re growing and it’s the startup phase. And for me, that’s my favorite phase in the business, the startup phase, because everything is so new and excited. That phase is so much fun.

And all the sudden you start getting connection with these other people you’re working with and that phase is so much fun because now you’re not as lonely because you have these other people and the company’s growing.

And then it gets to the point where there’s weird stress. Where something happens and the company starts collapsing, or employees aren’t working hard or you have fire someone or whatever that is. And really quickly, you as the founder and CEO, as soon as you have to stop being everybody’s friends and start becoming their boss, it causes this new weird isolation where you know, it wasn’t the same as it was at first.

At the very first it was me and my buddies and we were, it’s funny looking back on. I remember I had this little house, apartment that we had as our office and two or three of the guys who were working for me lived in it. So I’d come from my house over to the office, which was just a house. And I walk in, and it would smell like lil smokies, the little hot dogs. They were cooking lil smokies and I walk in and it stinks and they were all in their jammies hanging out and watching TV and goofing off playing video games. I’m like, “Alright guys, now this is an office, let’s get back to work.” And we’d get to work and try to be a real business.

And that was the beginning, just a bunch of friends hanging out. And like I said, as you start growing into more than that, either you have to fire someone or you have to let people go, and you have to be their boss and not their friends and it causes this separation or isolation. Or the business starts struggling. For me, these people all needed to get paid every two weeks whether we made money or not, so it caused isolation for me, because I was like, I gotta figure out how to make money because I had all the stress of making sure I could pay them. And that was the next phase.

And it was kind of weird because I feel like, again, I’m lonely at first. Then I get some friends, and then it becomes loneliness again. And it’s been interesting in just my role here at CLickfunnels, for a long time I was CEO, whatever that means, but I was more running the funnel team, we were building funnels and it was so much fun.

At first it was just me, then Steven came and it was me and Steven. And then Steven left and we brought in Jake and Nick and Karen and these other people. And it became this team and it was so much fun. And then as Clickfunnels became bigger and bigger you know I wasn’t able to keep doing my role. I had to be the CEO and the content developer, and this and that, all these different things.

So for the last almost, not quite a year yet, but I’ve been making this transition. And if you guys listen to the podcast you remember some of the podcast episodes, me talking about this scary change from being the all star to being the coach. And I’ve had to try and make those transitions, which have not been, they’re hard transitions. You’ve got to find the right people to replace what you’re doing. Luckily we had Julie Stoian come in and really take over my role in marketing. She’s done an amazing job in building a team and managing the team.

And that whole thing has been amazing, watching that, but now she gets to be friends with all my friends and I’m in this office by myself, all by myself. And its weird because it’s put me back in this weird phase of the business where I’m back to the isolation of it, and it’s just interesting how the cycles go.

So I’ve noticed that over the last couple of months, as I’ve been doing my thing, I’ve been doing the roles I was supposed to be doing and producing content and doing the CEO thing. But I definitely have felt more isolation and loneliness.

So a couple of things, number one, don’t feel bad for me. I’m fine. The last two weeks has been fun to kind of get around entrepreneurs again and get the stimulus from that, and the brains firing and the excitement and that’s been really, really fun. But the second thing, and I’m going to tell you this because this si the big takeaway hopefully for you. I had the realization that if I don’t have the connection from it, then it’s not worth it to me. I have to figure out how to do that. And I didn’t know how to do it for a long time, I just felt stuck and lost a little bit.

So for me, what I was starting to do, and this is actually starting next week, which I’m excited for, is I’m looking at those things I used to miss the most and I’m trying to bring parts of those back. And obviously I can’t go 100% back to that because there’s other people doing the roles, plus you know, I’m in charge of the stuff that I’m in charge of. But I’m basically, every Monday when I get to the office working, I’m going to be working in the section where the funnel team is. So I can be out there, I can feel the energy, I can talk, I can share, I can train, I can get my ideas, I can be around that while I’m doing my stuff. As opposed to my little Russell office.

And then the days when I’m supposed to be locked down writing or whatever, instead of just me locking down in isolation and not knowing who to share my thoughts with, I’m literally trying to find people to come work with me. So I talk to Dave like, “Hey Dave, this day I’m going to be working in the office, just come work in there at the same time as me. Just do your same thing, but be around me so that when I have ideas I can bounce them off you.” Or Steven Larsen, I was talking to Steven like, “Steven I want to recruit you to come hang out with me one day a week at work, at the same time I’m working.” And he was like, “That’d be awesome.” You know, those kinds of things.

So just for all of you guys, because I know this journey. I’ve been on it for 15 years now, as entrepreneurs I know that there is definitely that loneliness. So what I recommend for you, because some people get caught in that loneliness and they never recover, is try to find people.

Again, I’ve tried to build this amazing funnel hacker community for myself and for you guys to be able to tap into people. But I would look at that, and look for people in your local area. Find funnel hackers close to you. Find people that are doing the same thing and make sure to connect with them. Even if you’re not working together on the same business, just work in the same spot. Or maybe once a week you all go to a coffee shop or whatever, and you just work together so you can rebuild that connection. Because the isolation is real and it can cripple you from moving forward.

The worst thing that could possibly happen for you and for the people you’ve been called to serve is for you to feel isolated and not get your message out because of that.

Anyway, I hope that helps. I hope that helps any of you guys who are struggling with that to know that you’re not alone. I felt that multiple times throughout this journey as well. And recently, like I said, I’ve been feeling it as well. And this inner circle has helped re-ignite my excitement and my passion. And to not lose that I’m building structure around it. I’m trying to build structure to get people to be around me as I’m working, just so I can keep the connection and joy from that part of what we do.

So I hope that helps. With that said, I’m going to go hang out with my friends for the last 4 or 5 hours before they leave me, and they all go back to their homes for 6 months. And yeah, I’m excited. I’m feeling really good right now. Hopefully you are as well. If not, go plug in. The community is here, I built it for you. There’s hundreds of thousands of funnel hackers that will support you and work with you. Just go to the Facebook group or wherever and connect with them, meet up with them, and hopefully you guys will come join me on this journey on my value ladder.

I’m going to keep trying to provide as much value as possible, and whenever you’re ready to take that step. The first step from this free stuff is to go into the challenge, go to onefunnelaway.com, jump into the challenge, then come to Funnel Hacking Live, and just keep progressing, and me and this community are here to keep serving you and protect you. We’re grateful for you and your contribution and your willingness to go and do these crazy things and make no logical sense in the real world. But you’ve been called and you know it, and I know it. And if I can help serve you on that mission to help serve the people that you have been called to serve, then that means the calling that I’ve got will be fulfilled as well. It’s a win/win all around.

Alright, with that said, I appreciate you, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.