This is the second episode in an exciting series where you’ll get a chance to meet my wife Collette and her views on running an entrepreneurial family. On today’s super special episode, part two of three, Russell and his lovely wife, Collette are interviewed by Joshua and Ashley Latimer about what their family culture is like. Here are the questions Russell and Collette answer in part two:

-- If you had to start over, what advice would you give your younger self?

-- What does it mean to be a Brunson?

-- How does your family stay motivated during tough times, and how do you reset?

-- And What are some marriage and parenting systems that are working for you?

So listen here to find out what it’s like to be a Brunson by taking a sneak peek into their family culture.

Alright, so at the 7 year mark when we were struggling with our marriage and everything, we tried traditional counseling but I think the biggest impact for both of us was going to Tony Robbins. I went to UPW first, walked on fire, came home and I was like, “Ahh!” and it’s funny, we were both in the same state when I left, but then Tony gets you up to here. So when I came home I was like, “Collette, you’re really depressed, you should go.” So she went and came home on fire and we’re like, “Ahh!” Everything was awesome.

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Hey everyone this is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So I gotta know, how was the first episode with my wife? I’m nervous and excited to share her with you guys. She is such an amazing person who doesn’t get any of the limelight or the spotlight and this is kind of the first time she’s had a chance to be out there. So I hope you guys enjoyed the first episode.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, go back and listen to episode number one, we cover three really fun questions. And again, if you’re liking these take a picture on your phone or wherever you’re listening to it, go to Facebook or Instagram or wherever you do social stuff and post it, and do #marketingsecrets, and tag me because I’d love to see your thoughts. And then comment in the comments of your post what you thought about episode number one, what you liked about it, what was meaningful for you, what helped? So let me know on that one, and then do the same thing with this episode.

So episode two right now, we’re going to jump into, we’ve got 4 questions we’re going to go through right now. So I’ll tell you what the 4 questions are real quick, and then we’ll jump in.

Question number four:  If you had to start over, what advice would you give your younger self? Which is really good.

Question number five: What does it mean to be a Brunson? What’s your family culture like?

Question number six: How does your family stay motivated during tough times and how do you reset?

And question number seven: What are some marriage and parenting systems that are working for you?

Oh man, I’m excited for you guys to listen to this next episode, again, we’re going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back I’ll play the next segment of the interview and again, if you’re liking this or you get any ideas or ahas, please take a screen shot on your phone, post it and tag me and let me know what you guys liked about this episode with my beautiful wife, Collette. Alright, let’s queue up the theme song, and we’ll be right back.

Joshua: Alright question number four.

Ashley: Okay, if you had to start all over again, what would you do different this time and what advice would you give your younger self?

Russell: I know, do you want me to tell them mine?

Collette: Yes.

Russell: Alright, so at the 7 year mark when we were struggling with our marriage and everything, we tried traditional counseling but I think the biggest impact for both of us was going to Tony Robbins. I went to UPW first, walked on fire, came home and I was like, “Ahh!” and it’s funny, we were both in the same state when I left, but then Tony gets you up to here. So when I came home I was like, “Collette, you’re really depressed, you should go.” So she went and came home on fire and we’re like, “Ahh!” Everything was awesome.

Then we went to Date with Destiny after, that year we did everything Tony had, I went to Tony for the whole year basically. But we went to a Date with Destiny and I remember Tony talked about the 6 human needs and all that kind of stuff and he talked about why we do what we do, what need are we trying to get met?

And it was interesting because he helps you figure out what are your primary needs. For me, my primary need, the primary desire I have is love and connection. I’m looking for love and connection. And in my head though, I was like “I need to go get significance so my wife will love me and connect with me.” So I’m going and trying to take over the world, and make a million, and all this kind of stuff thinking that me being significant will make her love me more. So I went through this indirect pattern to try to get love and connection, that was the whole thing.

And I remember we did a launch and made like a million dollars, and I came home and I was like, conquered like, “We did a million dollars.’ And she was like, “I just wish you’d come home.”

Collette: Debbie Downer

Russell: I’m like, “I just conquered this thing.” And I had this realization at Date with Destiny, she loves me already, we already have connection, I don’t have to go prove anything. It’s like I’m going through this huge long path to get the thing that’s just right here. So that was my big thing. And I think, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs we do it initially because we need that significance, we’re looking for that because we want love and connection with our spouse or our parents, whoever it is that we’re trying to impress.

I think if I was to start over again, I would take things slower and just, I don’t’ know, there was a period in our life as I was building, where I was checked out and I was doing the thing, and that drove us apart. As opposed to like, not being so obsessed with the end goal and just slowing down and really, I don’t know. I think it’s the same thing, when we launched Clickufnnels, the same thing. Me and Todd had disconnected from everything to be able to get this thing off the ground. Where I think now it’s a lot better spot where now it’s fun because we’re traveling together, we’re doing a bunch of fun things, and she came to this mastermind in Puerto Rico, and it’s jus tmore things together, and I would have slowed down and done more of that from the very beginning. As opposed to thinking I had to go leave and get significance to come back, you know, slay the beast and come back and “here it is.” I would have been like, “Let’s go get this thing together.”

Joshua: It’s funny because she already loved you when you were selling potato guns making $20 a day, right?

Collette: Yes.

Joshua: But we forget that. I feel like I’m in counseling right now.

{Cross talk}

Joshua: I think I’m doing that right now. Okay, this isn’t about me, this is about you. That’s good, anything else you want to add or do you want to go to question 5?

Collette: No, I think that’s pretty good. I wish I could go back and be…

Joshua: Let’s talk about what it means to be a Brunson, like from your kids perspective. For us, we’re obsessed with this stuff, we have our family logo on, we have these shirts we had made custom, “Do Hard Things” is one of the things we tell our kids, all kinds of stuff. And I know that Russell thinks that’s really cool because he’s like geeking out when we talked about it a couple of times, but tell us what’s unique about your family culture.

Russell: First of all, I want to do all that cool stuff you guys are doing, they have so many cool things they’re doing. Anyway, I think a couple things that really, I think I watched Collette bring to the table that’s really fun, especially after Tony Robbins. We realized that every morning our poor kids wake up and they’re about to go to the evilest place on earth, we call it school, and they’re already tired. It’s like they wake up and it’s like, I remember waking up as a kid and hating waking up and hating going to school and you’re miserable until school’s over. And what Collette’s really good at, is getting the kids excited in the morning. She’ll turn musi con, and she’ll be goofy and dance with them.Doing stuff so that this wake in the morning is not this horrible thing, trying to get them to crack a smile.

I remember there would be times when the kids were little, us picking up and dancing around the whole house with them and just trying ot get them to not be miserable you know, being in a good state so they can go and conquer school, or conquer the difficult things. It’s one of my favorite things I watch Collette do all the time. What are other cool things?

We always tell them that Brunson’s, because all the kids don’t want to wrestle ever. So I’m always like Brunson’s wrestle. We do hard things. They, yeah, that’s a big one

Joshua: Do you use NLP on your kids to make them become wrestlers, Russell?

Russell: what’s that?

Joshua: Do you use NLP on your own kids to convince them to be wrestlers?

Russell: I don’t think that stuff works on your wife or kids, it’s really weird. It works on everybody else.

Collette: So stubborn. What’s wrong with us?

Joshua: Yeah, when Ashley drops the kids off at school…

Ashley: Oh gosh, don’t say this.

Joshua: Just tell them all the stuff….

Russell: Yeah, let’s hear it.

Ashley: Oh gosh, we pray, that’s one thing we do. But we make the prayer a little bit more…

Joshua: fun.

Ashley: a little more fun at the end. I say, “And then all my people said…” and they’ll be like, “Amen!” If they don’t end “amen” loud enough,

Joshua: It doesn’t count.

Ashley: It doesn’t count. We gotta pray again. And we just sit in line and wait.

Joshua: And then you roll down your window and say, “I love you” way too loud and embarrass them.

Ashley: yeah, and I do this other thing too that they like. I go, “Bring em out, bring em out. She’s 3 feet tall, and 39 pounds and she likes to party, Finley Sarah Latimer.” And I do that for all my kids.

Collette: Oh my gosh.

Russell: That’s so cool. I love it.

Ashley: They don’t think it’s cool. Some of them do.

Joshua: They think it’s cool until like 4th grade.

Russell: In 4

Joshua: It’s not that embarrassing yet, they just own it, like “yeah mom, you’re the best mom. Yeah.”

Ashley: My sixth grader just puts his hood on and walks into school.

Russell: He walks away.

Collette: I’m curious because Russell takes the kids to school certain days, same thing, in the funnel hacker jeep with music pumping and then whatever else, lights flashing, I don’t even know. And breaking the rules, going up the wrong way, dropping off the kids. Anyway, I’m like, I asked the kids the other day, they love it. And they’re in middle, those are the middle schools, middle schoolers.

Russell: Do you like Daddy’s jeep? “Yeah, it’s so cool.”

Collette: Then I feel like the lame-o, I’m like, “Get in the mom-mobile. Let’s go.”

Ashley: One time I tried to download that song, “Bring em out, bring em out.” And then I downloaded it, and I didn’t listen to it before I played it. And it’s like totally inappropriate. In my mind, I thought it was just the “Bring em out, bring em out.” Nope.

Russell: There’s two versions. Radio version and non-radio.

Ashley: It’s inappropriate, so you just have to do it yourself.

Russell: One of the things that you’re talking about that I thought about that we did about a year ago, that’s really cool. After Charfin came and did an event, he talked about setting family goals, or he talked about this in your business. Like in your business having a hall of fame goal, and then what’s your superbowl goal, the yearly goal, and then you have your weekly’s, your monthly’s.

So we did this, not quite a year ago, we said as a family, what’s our hall of fame goal? Someday, what do we want to be known for, what’s the hall of fame goal? So what we set for that goal, so in the Mormon church there’s temples, and the best thing to do is to get married inside the temple, that’s where you’re sealed for all time and eternity, it’s this really special thing. But to go to the temple you have to be worthy. So you have to be living the commandments, you have to be doing stuff like that. So our family hall of fame goal is that we all want to, when Norah is old enough to get married in the temple,

Collette: Norah’s the baby.

Russell: She’s the baby, we all want to be worthy enough that we can be in the temple with her. So that’s our, if that happens, then yay, we were successful as parents. Yay, our family. That’s kind of the thing. It might not happen, you know, who knows? So every night now, it’s fun, they all pray, “Please bless us to be worthy to be in the temple with Norah when she gets married.” That’s a thing that we all strive for.

Ashley: How sweet.

Russell: And then we set a super bowl goal, what’s the goal for the year now, that’s going to get us closer to the hall of fame. So the goal we set was to be able to read the whole Book of Mormon as a family, which we’d been trying to do that since they were born.

Collette: We have. We finally did 13 years later.

Russell: Yeah, so we set the goal, and then we said, “you know when they win the super bowl, they get to go somewhere crazy. They all go to Disneyland and dump Gatorade on their heads. What do you guys want when we succeed?” and we had this goal, so they all wanted to go on a cruise, a Disney cruise with their friends. So we set it, set the goal, set the date, and they were so cool. There were times that we’d be out on a date and they’re texting us, “We just read two chapters.’ Or we’re out of town and they’re reading. They actually set the goal and pushed it and it was so cool to see them achieve the goal and Collette had it set up so that Disney, when we were on the cruise they came out and gave us awards and cake and all sorts of crazy stuff to celebrate it.

Collette: Of course, they treat you well at Disney.

Ashley: I love that.

Joshua: That’s awesome.

Ashley: That’s really good. Okay,

Joshua: question number six.

Ashley: How does your family stay motivated or focused during tough times? And what does your family do to reset when things get out of sync.

Collette: I say, reset, we kind of like, I’m going to start with the reset. I feel like, for instance, Russell was at his busiest Christmas break, all the things, but we ended up going to McCall, Idaho, which is a couple of hours out of town, in a little cabin, disconnected, and it just kind of reset. Everybody was playing board games, everybody was together, in this tiny little kitchen that I loved. I don’t know, in this big home people can just scatter and they’re gone. I feel like you can eat dinner, and they’re gone. So I feel like,

Russell: Everyone’s stuck, it’s so cool.

Collette: We’re in this cute little place, and we’re tight together doing the things. So for a reset, I just loved that. Going either on, even if you can’t go for a couple of days, just a walk or take a break outside, just to reset, break the pattern.

Joshua: I just thought you guys built funnels as a family to reset.

Russell: Funnel cakes.

Ashley: I love that.

Joshua: I don’t feel like you guys probably have, at least Russell, I hear he’s a motivated guy, so how do you stay motivated? You just kind of are that, right, and then you guys do Tony Robbins, and you’re doing the dance parties in the morning, that’s really valuable, resetting. Is there internet at that cabin?

Collette: There was wifi I think, they had a smart tv.

Russell: We didn’t have, we had our phones but that’s all we had.

Collette: Russell didn’t even crack his computer open, which I’ve never seen that in a lot of years. So I feel like the reset was good for him.

{Clapping}

Collette: Yeah, it was big.

Joshua: That is so hard. That is so hard. That is no joke. Okay, question number seven, this is a good one. And when I say “system” I’m going to ask you what the most important marriage system and parenting system is, you know throughout your journey. System is, people don’t say that phrase, we’re going to kind of bring that phrase out, but it’s just the way that you do something. It’s, every family is already fully systemized, the question is are those systems serving you well, are they serving your kids well? It’s not if you need this, because you already have them, the way you talk to yourself, the way that you take care of your body or don’t. So what do you think in terms of marriage systems, and parenting systems, what are a couple of really important ones that come to mind?

Russell: I tell you as we were reading these questions ahead of time, that was like, huh, maybe we need to work on our systems.

Collette: We’re doing better than we think we are. I feel like we’ve never had a really awesome system, other than positive vibes.

Russell: I think a big thing for us too is that we go to church every Sunday, and then one thing that, one of the beliefs of our church is we have a thing every week called family night. And we’re not perfect at it, I wish we were perfect at it, but family nights we sit down and it’s cool because it starts with an opening prayer. And then, you know, usually there’s a spiritual thought, and we try to calendar out what’s happening this week, so we have some context of what’s happening, and then we should be better. We used to always make treats and stuff, we should probably get back to that.

Collette: Yeah.

Russell: We used to always, we had a family home evening board and they always like, “We need an opening song. I get to lead the music.” Do all this stuff when they were younger.

Collette: The problem is they’re growing up, so we’re getting into the prickly teenager years.

Russell: Teenagers are hard. Do you guys have teenagers already?

Ashley: Yeah, he’s 12.

Joshua: He’s 12 yeah, almost.

Ashley: Oh, and it’s so hard. And this is a whole new avenue of life.

Russell: Yeah, we’ve got two that are 13, and it’s like one’s in a15 year old body, and one’s like a 9 year old body. So it’s kind of like, the older ones, it’s so hard. And they beat each other up all the time. How do you referee that? Do you let them fight it out?

Collette: We’re in the middle of craziness trying to figure it out. So suggestions please, anybody.

Russell: If you have a guest who’s figured that part out, let us know, we’ll listen to that one and then we’ll come back for a recap.

Joshua: Yeah, we’re going to find the answers. This whole project, we’re not trying to be gurus at all, we’re just, we want to do this, we want to be intentional with our family. So we’re just going to facilitate and crowd source for system ideas, and you know, deliver that to the tribe or whatever.

Ashley: And literally I’ve been taking notes. I’m just like, “Oh my goodness.” As I’ve been learning from the entrepreneur part, and then also the parenting part. It’s mind blowing, amazing.

Joshua: So with your kids, in regards to parenting or marriage systems, I know you guys do date night sometimes, but with Russell’s schedule it’s probably next to impossible to have total consistency, I’m assuming. But what about with your kids, is there any little things you do, annual things, is there….One thing, I’ll give you one thing that I do that’s really cool. We do Sawyer Sunday, Maverick Monday, Tucker Tuesday, Finley Friday and it’s not perfect at all,

Ashley: June May Thursday.

Joshua: I’ll sit down and play legos for 45 minutes and just be totally focused on that one kid at a time. That little thing is ridiculous, the impact it has on the kids. But that’s an example. Is there anything else you guys do as Brunson’s that’s…

Russell: We gotta do that, that’s really….

Collette: I feel like individually we’re not awesome. I feel like we’re like, I mean, we go out and play and we play hard. So Russell’s outside playing with all the kids, but for individual, for instance, I haven’t done it in forever, but I pulled one of my kiddos out of lunch the other day and took him to lunch. He’s like, “Mom, I really needed that.” But of course, his love language is quality time.

Russell: And when we get them all together they all fight. I think that’s a big thing we gotta start doing. Will you help us come up with cool names for our kids in the days of the week?

Collette: Oh no, I’m going to come up with some later.