Three things that I do to help survive and thrive when the stress and pressure of everything starts building. On this episode Russell talks about how he is surviving right now while pressure is high from writing a book, being a family man, and running a company. He gives three solid tips that will help anyone feeling similar pressure to get through it. Here are his three tips in this episode:

-- Have a vision of what you want to accomplish.

-- You have to create deadlines.

-- You need to build out an amazing support team.

So listen here to find out how to apply these tips into your life when the heat is on and you need to get stuff done.

So I’m down to the literal crunch time. And so it’s interesting, as you have these hard deadlines you can’t miss, all the sudden as you’re working towards it, all the other things start falling to the wayside. All the things that aren’t hyper important. We had meetings that seemed important suddenly don’t become important. They’re not urgent.

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What is up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m walking home from the office and I had to share some cool stuff with you.

Alright everybody, I hope you are all doing well. I am in like, what do you call it, crunch time or deadline time, or whatever you want to call it right now, plato o plomo, lead or gold. One of those times in your life where you have to get to stuff done, and as much as I hate those times because they’re stressful and tiring and they wear me out, it’s also the times when I get a lot of stuff done, which is interesting. In fact, one of the biggest reasons why most people don’t get stuff done, is they don’t set these hard deadlines, so because of that they keep letting themselves off the hook, and things they’re supposed to get done in a week takes two weeks and then three and then four and then five, and then it just keeps getting pushed out forever. And I definitely know that is true for me.

These are all the cars driving past me. Anyway, definitely true for me as well. A lot of you guys know, I starting thinking about writing the Traffic Secrets book, when was that, it was actually in the middle of the Expert Secrets launch. After I launched the Expert Secrets book I’m like, “I’m done, I’ll never write again. I’ve got two books now, it’s over. The work is finished.” And the middle of our launch John Reese messaged me and was like, “Hey would you be interested in buying Traffic Secrets from me?” And I was like, “Yes. That is the third book. I must do it.’

So that’s when I said yes, paid him a tidy sum to buy the domain from his, and it’s been kind of there, waiting for me to write, in the back of my head. And so I slowly started moving forward on it, nothing really happened, and then about a year ago I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do a live event, where I teach all this stuff.’ So it was a little over a year ago. I actually went and spoke at Dana Derricks dream 100 con and at that event, it was the first time I spent a whole bunch of time trying to think through the curriculum for the book, for what it was going to be.

So I sat there and doodled out a million ideas and put an outline together and stories, and had the first interation of that. I think it gave me, if I remember right, two hours of so to speak at the event. So I got up and I presented it and you know, I was testing my material. So I did it and there were some things that you could tell people were like, “Ohhh!” freaked out about. And other things that just kind of hit people and fell on the side. And I was like, “Oh, they didn’t get that.” Either it was just too confusing or it wasn’t explained. Whatever the reason.

And then a month later I was doing a bigger event for all of our Two Comma Club Coaching members called Traffic Secrets, surprise, surprise, I called it the same name as the book. So we set up that event, and that gave me about a month or so to really dive deep on furthering the curriculum and furthering the teaching, because I knew I was doing a live event.

So for the next month I killed myself, up super late nights, and up early mornings and did all this stuff. And we ended up doing the event, it was a two day event where I taught the newer curriculum for the book. And I taught that again, and the same process. Some things landed, some things didn’t, but it was me testing the material and me just kind of figuring out what was going to work and not work. And that was almost a year ago.

So since then, I had my first deadline, I was supposed to get the book done. I think it was by the end of the year, like December. So I got a publisher who signed me and gave me a royalty which was really exciting, except for with the royalty comes a deadline. So they said “the deadline is here.” So I started working towards it. I was working on the outline, section one, I started to write a little bit, then Funnel Hacking Live started looming. And I was trying to get Funnel Hacking Live and the book done. And finally I was like, “I’m not going to get this deadline. We need to shift it.” So we shifted the deadline to after Funnel Hacking Live, and then shifted again, and it’s been shifted three or four times.

And now, summer just ended, today was actually the first day of school for my kids. So we’re the last week of August, and my deadline is September first. So it’s about a week from now, that it’s supposed to be due, which I’m not going to actually hit that deadline, but I will have the first section of the book done by the deadline. So the goal was to get done with section one on September 1, and then 2 days later section 2, and 2 days later is section 3, which gives me time to kind of go back and edit.

So I’m down to the literal crunch time. And so it’s interesting, as you have these hard deadlines you can’t miss, all the sudden as you’re working towards it, all the other things start falling to the wayside. All the things that aren’t hyper important. We had meetings that seemed important suddenly don’t become important. They’re not urgent.

The urgency now is that the book is due, and so all the important things start following by and forcing me to do it. So I’ve been writing so much. I was up last night up until one, writing after I got up super early this morning, writing all day. Had meetings this morning for like 3 hours. As soon as the meetings got done, I pulled out my treadmill desk and jumped on it. And for two hours and f46 minutes I walked and wrote. I got 1 1/2 chapters finished during that time. Then I had another 3 hour meeting after that. Now I’m walking home, recording a podcast. As soon as I get home to play with my kids, as soon as they start getting tired, and then I will jump back in my office and try to write another, I don’t know, three hours tonight. And then I’ll wake up super early tomorrow and repeat this process until the book is done.

Anyway, it’s a lot of work and its tiring and stressful and I’ve been telling everybody, this is the season of my life that I call being tired, because not only do I have to write the book, but you know obviously we have a lot of other things. There’s some stuff I can’t tell you about, but we are about a month away from Clickfunnels 5 year birthday, and we are rolling out this insane new learning platform, that’s all I can tell you right now, that is going to change the marketing/entrepreneurship world forever. So we have that task.

We have a new funnel that went live last week that’s killing it right now. We’ve, so many things, so many software updates, so many big software changes we’re going to be announcing. The meeting today for three hours was Funnel Hacking Live, we’re planning Funnel Hacking Live. I’m about to start asking all the people who are going to be speaking to come and speak. We’re trying to finalize speakers.

Anyway, there’s so much stuff. Plus I’m trying to be a present dad and father and husband and all those things as well. Anyway, there’s a lot that I’m juggling and trying to keep in front of. I have church responsibilities as well, on top of that. I’m not going to lie, there’s a lot and I’m tired. But I keep moving forward on it, because I have a vision, I have a mission and I know the importance of what I’m doing, and I believe in it, and it gives me a lot of fulfillment and meaning, so I’m going to keep on doing it.

It’s funny, there’s a guy, I have a lot of respect for him, but he wanted to interview me for his podcast. I’m like, ‘I’d love to but I’m super busy. I’ll have you set up a time with my assistant, she can kind of help you find a time.” And it was tough because we have, obviously this book’s done, but then before the end of the year I have to do the rewrite on Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets, both those books have to do a rewrite because they’re republishing those with a new publisher as well. So basically I’m writing three books for the next three months. So when this one is done I have a week off where I’m going with my wife on a vacation, and when I get back, the next book I’ve got 14 days to finish that one. The next one I got 30 days to finish that one.

So it’s like, it’s a lot, but it’s not loosening up super easy. And then from there we go directly into wrestling season with my kids, which means I leave half days every day to do wrestling practice with them. That leads all the way up to Christmas. And then Christmas we have, basically we have to get all my Funnel Hacking Live presentations done in December because January we have the Two Comma Club Cruise, and then boom we’re at Funnel Hacking Live.

Anyway, just the content creation, the volume of how much stuff we have to get created between now and the end of the year, is more than most companies will do their entire existence. And we’re doing that plus all the other things. So there’s a lot.

And I’m not saying that to complain, again, I love it. But it made me laugh because this person, my assistant Melanie looked at the schedule, and she’s like, “Literally, the first opening that he has a free 30 minute window is in February.” She was trying to give him the very first spot, and he wrote back, and I guess was upset saying, “I’m busy too. If he can’t make time for me until then…” Whatever, he was kind of upset about it. I get it, but then it was funny because he posted something on Facebook the other day that was like, “I’m looking for a new show to binge watch on Netflix, any suggestions.” And I didn’t comment, but I really wanted to, to be like, “Dude, if you have time to binge watch anything, then you have more time than me.” I haven’t watched TV in forever, because there’s no more time.

Why am I telling you this? A couple of reasons, number one, doing this work and I’m talking about my work, but I’m talking about your work here as well. Doing this work is not going to be easy. And there will be varying degrees, there’s times when there’s a lot of pressure and it’s hard. There’s times when it’s easier. But it’s not little. So if you decide to go on this mission and to pursue entrepreneurship and do these things, there’s going to be pressure and there’s going to be a lot of stuff. And honestly, if you don’t have a vision of what you want to accomplish and a mission and calling or whatever you want to call it, to do that thing, it gets really tough when the heat gets turned on.

It would be so easy for me at this point to be like, “I’m done for a year.” I can take a year off and nothing in my life would shift at all. It’s not about that. It’s about a calling, a mission, a vision, things that I’m pursuing, trying to get done, because I believe they’re bigger than me. I strongly believe in that, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. So that’s number one, you have to have that.

Number two, you have to create deadlines, solid hard deadlines. If you’ve listened to this podcast while I’ve talked a couple of times, like lead or gold deadlines, where it’s like, if you’re successful you get gold. If not, you have lead. Lead is a bullet. Plato o Plomo, lead or gold or silver and gold, whatever you want to call it. You have to set these hard deadlines, if you don’t, it’s so easy to wiggle past the thing. You know what I mean?

I started this book a year ago, and honestly the majority of the writing has happened in the last 45 days.  I could have gotten the book done last year if I would have blocked out two months just to do it. But I couldn’t because I had other things. But it wasn’t until I had the hard deadline, and I’m grateful to my publisher for basically giving me money because it forced me to have a deadline. Otherwise, in fact, Friday I almost pushed it out. I literally wrote an entire email to them saying, explaining why there was no way I could possibly do it. And then Joy on my team, who is kind of my head of content development, she’s helping me to get these things done, and get all the writing done and hit the timelines, and all that kind of stuff. She’s doing the editing, kind of following behind, doing the editing of the book.

I was about to send the email and I asked her about it and she’s like, “Wait, wait, hold on.” And she mapped out a new schedule of “Okay, if you can write 2 chapters every single day this weekend and then this on Monday. And between this and this you can get this part done.” You know, set a structured schedule. And I have to run and race to be able to do it. By doing that, it’s forcing me to actually get it done. And again, if it wasn’t for that deadline, this book would not be done for another, who knows, 6 months or so. So having a solid deadline, either a real one or a fake one that you pose upon yourself, but regardless you have to stick to it and not let it shift. That’s number two.

Number three, you need to build out an amazing support team. It’s not just you know, at the office, but all aspects of your life. I have an amazing wife and support network here at home that allows me to do these things. I have a support network at work. I have a support network in my writing. I have a support network in the running of the company. All these different departments are able to run and I’m able to do this because I have such an amazing support network.

It’s interesting, Stacy and Paul Martino, you guys have probably heard me talk about them. They’re some of our inner circle members who run relationshipdevelopment.org, and help save marriages. They just moved here to Boise, and I had a chance on Saturday to go swing by their house really quick. And they’re really, really good at setting up structure and systems for the things in their life that would normally suck away your time, so they can focus on their work.

So much so that they have a nanny who helps watch the kids. They have a house manager that goes shopping for them, buys the things. They have people for all these different tasks because they’re like, “I should only be doing this. Everything else needs to have a person and a system in place to make sure it actually happens.” So I was watching them as they were plugging these people, as soon as they moved here they had a checklist with systems, plugging people in, hiring, getting them in place so that….Saturday they’re like, ‘We had to drive to Whole Foods to buy this stuff. We never want to drive there again. So we’re getting the person, building out the system.” So it’s like, “We’ve done this once, we bought the stuff we like, we figured it out. Now we’ll never have to do this task again, because now it’s all documented and we can plug somebody in to do that thing.” They’re building a support network here in the new home, the new area they just moved into.

So the same thing is true for you. If you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to create these amazing things, you’ve got to start building out the support networks around you, like in your home so your home life doesn’t crash. In your business so your business doesn’t crash. Whatever project you want to take, the first step is like, you build out the structure and the systems around that, to support it, so I can actually do what I need to do.

A lot of times we go and we try to do some of the amazing things without the structure in place, and that’s why often we crash and burn. So there’s three big tips. I’m home now, my kids are out playing soccer on the soccer field, which is exciting. I’m going to go, thanks again for listening, appreciate you guys for being subscribers to this podcast. I hope that you get something out of every episode I publish. And hopefully when the Traffic Secrets book is coming out you’ll read it, because I am literally bleeding from my fingers for you. Not literally, figuratively bleeding from my fingers for you and I hope you love it. Appreciate you all, thanks so much and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.