A, B, and C students and how they sync in life… On this special episode Russell talks about A, B, and C students and what kind of workers they are from the driver’s seat of his new Tesla. Here are some of the insightful things on this episode:

-- Find out why A students are workers, B students are managers, and C students are strategic thinkers.

-- See why each of the categories are key to running your business and why none are better than the others.

-- And see which of those categories Russell believes his own wife, Collette, falls under.

So listen here to find out which category you fall under, and what that means you need for your business.

I had this big epiphany with this with my wife recently and with my kids. I’m looking at everything through this lens now. My wife is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, that’s why I married her. I love her, she is insanely cool. And sometimes I get frustrated with her because I know that she wants, she’ll want us on Saturday’s to work as a family. So I’ll come up to her and say, “What’s the vision, what do you want me to do?” and she’ll look at me like, “I don’t know. I just want everything done.” And she gets, when I ask her, “What’s the vision?” She gets really, really stuck.

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I almost said Marketing In Your Car and there’s a special reason why I said that. The first, I don’t know how many episodes, couple hundred episodes, this podcast was called Marketing In Your Car Podcast, because I would do it everyday while I was in the car driving to the office. And today is a special day because I’m actually driving to the office in a car, but it’s my new car. And You may notice, it’s not as loud as the last car. Usually I was in the jeep, which is loudest car on earth, which is why if you listen to the last hundred episodes you’re like ‘Man, it is a really loud car that he drives.’

But right now I’m driving in a Tesla, and it is so quiet and so fast and so insane. And so maybe we’re going to call this one the Marketing Car Episode number one. No just kidding, this is still marketing secrets, but I got something fun to share with you guys today. I’ll be right back after the theme song.

Alright everybody, so first off, if you don’t own a Tesla yet, you should just get one, they’re amazing and fast and fun. My kids have been having so much fun driving around in circles and driving down the street without my hands on the wheel. In fact, I could, oh yes, I’m going to do that. I’m going to go up to the busier street where I can put it into cruise control and I’m going to talk, I’m going to podcast with my hands off the wheel, because I have to. It’s the first time in the Tesla while podcasting. What? This is a huge, this a big moment for me. I’m so excited.

So with that said, there’s so many things I could talk to you about today. On my, you guys heard some of the episodes from the Lake Powell trip, and on the long, long drive home in the RV as I was writing the Traffic Secrets book and a bunch of other things, I just had a bunch of ideas in my head of things that I want to share. But there’s one on top of my head right now that I wanted to share that I thought was super fascinating and I don’t know if it will help you or not, but hopefully it will give you some insights as you’re building your teams.

I know one of the big themes at Funnel Hacking Live this last year was focusing on the ‘who’ not the ‘how’. Who are the people you need to help create your vision, not so much how do you do everything. And with that’s been a lot of team building, so inside the coaching program we’ve been talking a lot about team building, and finding the right who’s to develop your how and all that kind of stuff.

Anyway, one of the big thoughts, I think I did a podcast on this a while ago. I can’t remember if I did or if it’s just me talking in my head, which happens sometimes. But one of the big aha’s I’ve had recently is just that there’s three types of brains or minds, three types of people inside of every single company. And it’s interesting because I used to think that one was better or worse or whatever, and it’s not true at all. They’re all vitally essential to building an amazing team. And as soon as I became aware of it, everything shifted. Because I, I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I never had a job before, so I didn’t know how a lot of job things work.

Check it out, I’m driving right now with no hands. This is the way to podcast, in a Tesla, without holding onto a wheel. Anyway, I’m such a nerd.

Anyway, three types of people. So I’m going to kind of go through these. The very first type is a strategic thinker. This is the person in the business who is like the visionary, who’s dreaming about the things and the vision and where we’re going to go and all that kind of stuff, right. That’s like one skill set. The second skill set is that of a manager. The manager is really good at listening to the strategic thinker and then being able to lay out, here’s all the things that need to happen to make this person’s vision become a reality. That’s the manager. And then the third type of mind is the doer and the worker. The person who’s doing the actual work. They’re the ones who say, okay, this is my piece of it. And they sit down and they do the work.

And again, I used to think, I don’t know, I always thought, “Oh, everybody needs to be strategic thinkers.” And I tried to get people to think strategically, and I thought that was the key. And then I thought, “Oh we need more people managing each other.” And a lot of times we find these people who were amazing workers, they were so good at their thing and I thought, “Man, they’re amazing. We should upgrade them to be a manager.” And we put them in a manager role, and they’re horrible managers.

And I started realizing that those are three different skill sets. And sometimes people have, may be able to be good at two of them or something like that. I feel like I’m a very good strategic thinker, and I feel like I’m a really good worker. I can sit down and I can outwork anybody. But there’s one that you’re probably better at, or one that you should be focusing your time and energy at. In the company now I make way more money for us and for everybody, have a bigger impact by being a strategic thinker than I do being a doer. Even though I love doing, and I’m good at doing, and I could sit down and work my butt off. But the strategic thinker for me, is a higher level activity because I’m better at that than I am at the doing.

And other times there’s people that are better doers, right. Especially people that are very specific in a field, like the copywriter, the designer, the programmer, the video, the audio, the people that are good at a thing, and basically focusing there. And then there’s the managers that, they are probably good workers, but they’re better at the management of people.

Anyway, I started looking at that, there’s the three different levels. And what was interesting, this week while we were on the houseboat, I was there with John Jonas and Dan Goggins who own Onlinejobs.ph and they had their kids there as well. It was really, really fun, we had a good time. Anyway, what was interesting, we were talking about business and things like that, and one of them said a comment that was interesting to me. They said, “You know, the a workers will work for the b workers..” or excuse me, “The A students will work for the B students who run the companies owned by the C students.”

And I started thinking about that, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, think how fascinating that is.” The A students will work for the B students, who manage the companies that are owned by the C students. And I started thinking, oh my gosh, think about this. Strategic thinkers traditionally are the entrepreneurs, the founders of a company, they’re very good at strategically thinking, but they also were traditionally horrible at school. For example my cumulative GPA at college, I believe, was 2.3, which means I had straight C’s, and maybe one A, which was a wrestling class, and the rest were all C’s. I was a C person. I’d sit in class and I’d daydream and be all over the place and try to do team work, “Let’s all work together in a team.” And I couldn’t do the team work either. I was a strategic thinker, so because of that I struggled in school and I was only able to get a C.

I look at a lot of people who are management level inside of Clickfunnels who are really good at that, they are B students. They’re the ones who get along really good with people and they coordinate things and they’re probably the ones who have a lot of weekend activities and parties and they hung out with a lot of people and they’re really good at the management of people and ideas and concepts. And then the A workers are the really, really good workers who sit down and they hear something, they hear it and learn it, and they understand it and they go and do it.

And I started having this epiphany of just like, oh my gosh, if you look at that, the strategic thinkers are typically were the C students in school. The manager was typically the B student in school, and the workers are typically the A students in school. And again, I used to have this cocky attitude like one was better than the other, and I think it was because, honestly it was a chip on my shoulder from always thinking I was the dumb kid because I was the C student that always struggled. So I got in business and had success and I’m like, “Oh, school sucks.” And all these things, and looking back at it from this lens I’m like, “No, school is a really good way to develop your workers.”

And you need amazing workers, and you know the majority of our company are amazing workers who are doing the thing and they’re the best of the best at the thing. And you know, that’s such a big key. And then you’ve got the managers, and you’ve got the strategic thinkers. So anyway, it just got me to kind of look at this from a different lens.

I’m struggling a little bit because I’m still trying to figure out how to drive a Tesla. This is my second day on the road, there’s all these weird things happening and lights popping up and on the little dashboard there’s cars flying past me, and I’m just trying to make sure I don’t kill myself on day two of my Tesla driving. I was pretty sure I was going to get a ticket on day one, because I got the ludicrous mode, so you tap the gas, like I just did, and you go from like zero to 800 in half a second. Anyway, there’s my C student brain ADD-ing all over the place.

Alright, I’m coming back, I’m going to wrap this one up. But basically the thing I wanted you to learn from today is that there are three types of people inside your company and there’s none of them that are better or worse. If Clickfunnels was me as the strategic thinker, guess what would happen, nothing. I would have a lot of whiteboards, a lot doodles, and it would look really, really cool, but nobody’s life would have been changed.

If I had a strategic mind and a bunch of workers, guess what would happen, we would have grown and had four people on our team and stopped at that point because there was nobody who could manage the people and put the things together and take the strategy into implementation for the workers to do the work. And if it wasn’t for the B players, we wouldn’t be able to grow a company and scale a company and have all these different people. Not B players, B students, the managers right.

And all three are essential. There are none that are better or worse than the other, they’re all key skills. So when you understand that, and again, it sync’s really close to like A students are workers, B students are managers, and C students are the strategic thinkers. What’s interesting is how in your company if you start thinking about this, look at the people around you, look around and say okay, what am I? And I think a lot of times we think that we’re the strategic thinker because we’re an entrepreneur or whatever, we want to be that person. But if you really are honest with yourself and don’t think what you want to be like, but what are you actually amazing at? If you look at that and say, “You know, I’m actually a really, really good worker. I love to just work here.”

Or like, “I’m not that good at doing the thing. I’m not that good at coming up with stuff, but man, I’m a really good manager.” Understand that and say, “Cool, I’m going to surround myself with the others. “I need to find a good strategic thinker that I could bring on my team. I need to find really good workers.” Or vice versa, “I’m a good worker, I need to find managers to manage more people besides me, and we need a strategic thinker to give us a vision and direction.”

It’s all about team building. It’s all about looking at what you’ve got…It’s like a basketball team, and I’m not a big basketball guy, but you know if you come out there and you’ve got, oh man, this is going to date me. The only basketball players I know are John Stockton and Karl Malone and Mark Eaton, that was the last time I watched basketball, was in high school. But anyway, if the whole field was a bunch of John Stockton’s, he may be a rock star, but he’s a point guard and he’s tiny, you’re going to lose. And if you had a whole bunch of Mark Eaton’s, you’re going to lose because he’s like 7 foot 7 and he can’t run, but man, he can tip the ball and he can block people. If you’ve got a bunch of Karl Malone’s, it’s the same thing. You’ve got to have all the different people to make the team work.

So understanding how essential that is for yourself and for your team as you’re building out, and being okay with that. Being okay. And if you’re not the strategic thinker, be okay. If you’re not the worker, be okay with that. Fit into what works for you.

I had this big epiphany with this with my wife recently and with my kids. I’m looking at everything through this lens now. My wife is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, that’s why I married her. I love her, she is insanely cool. And sometimes I get frustrated with her because I know that she wants, she’ll want us on Saturday’s to work as a family. So I’ll come up to her and say, “What’s the vision, what do you want me to do?” and she’ll look at me like, “I don’t know. I just want everything done.” And she gets, when I ask her, “What’s the vision?” She gets really, really stuck.

And then I’m like, “Okay, so delegate. Who do you want to do what?” And she looks at me like, “What are you talking about?” like I’m speaking Chinese to her right. And then I look at her and she sits down and she just works her butt off. She will clean the entire house, and we’ve got a big house, by herself, faster than anyone ever, and it’s just immaculate and spotless. And she is a worker. She is insanely good as a worker. But she’s not a manager, she can’t delegate, she’s not good at that, and she’s not good at the vision.

So now I’m understanding that, and I come in and I say, “Okay Collette, the vision I have for this Saturday, let’s get the whole garage clean. Is that what you agree with?” and she’s like, “Oh yeah, I love that vision.” I’m like, “Cool. I’m going to get the kids.” And then I gotta be the manager and say, “Okay, you do this and you do this.” And I manage out the kids, and then we all go and we work, and that’s how it flows really well.

All the fights we get on Saturday mornings is when I’m trying to ask, “What’s your vision?” or I’m trying to say, “Who do you want to do what?” That’s not her skill set. So it’s understanding that, and now that we kind of understand those roles, man things work so much better now because I can, because I’m always waiting, like I don’t want to step on her foot, so I’m going to let her cast the vision. And she’s just like, “I just gotta work and get this thing done, because I’m a worker.” And that’s what she does. So I realized I’m not stepping on her foot, I’m actually doing a really good thing by casting the vision and getting people in the right spots to do the right things, then it just changed everything.

Anyway, I hope that helps. Hopefully that helps in your marriage, hopefully it helps with your relationships, with your kids, with your company, with your team, with all the things you’re trying to do. Because if you have all those pieces it makes your job a bajillion times easier. And you can quote me on that.

So with that said, thanks you guys, appreciate you all. And hopefully for those of you guys who struggled in school and you got C’s or you got B’s, you’re okay with that now. You’re like, “Man, it’s okay. I’m a strategic thinker, I’m a manager. I don’t need to get A’s.” and if you’re an A student, be like, “Man, I am good at getting crap done. That’s where I fit inside the team. That’s my super power. Let’s get some crap done and plug me in to the right spot.”

For D student and F students, I don’t really know where you fit in this. I think D and F, yeah, I got nothing for you. You’re probably, yeah, you should probably go back to school and try a little harder next time. Because even I got C’s and I was really bad at school. You just show up and you get a C, the other one’s just don’t show up, so you probably don’t want to hire them on your team.

Alright, that’s all I got. Appreciate you all, thanks for listening. If you got any value from this, please take a screen shot of your phone right now, and post it on Facebook and instagram and tag me so I can see it, and use #marketingsecrets, I greatly appreciate it. With that said, I’ll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye everybody.