Are you watching the strategy behind what we're doing and why we're doing it? If not, start watching closer. On this episode Russell talks about making some strategic chess moves with Clickfunnels in the near future that won't make sense to people on the outside. Here are some of the awesome things to look for in today's episode:

-- When you can look forward to some announcements from Clickfunnels, and why you should look at the underlying strategies.

-- And hear an example of somebody else in the business that is also making strategic moves, and why Russell thinks they are doing it.

So listen here to find out when Clickfunnels will be making some announcements, and find out why Russell wants you to look at the strategy behind it.

I’m watching, there’s someone I’ve had a chance to get to know a year ago through instagram, and it’s Nicole Arbour, some of you guys may know her, she made a video back 4 or 5 years ago called Dear Fat People, that went crazy viral. She got a lot of hate for it, a lot people loved it, but regardless created a lot of noise. And it was fascinating to watch her do that a couple of years ago and just kind of, that was kind of interesting, like what’s her strategy? Why is doing this? She’s going to make a lot of people angry, some people happy. But what’s the reasoning? But she’s very strategic in her thinking and in the moves she makes which is fascinating.

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Hey everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we are going to talk some strategy.

Alright, so I don’t even know how or where to go with this podcast episode, other than I have been having so much fun recently watching the great strategic minds play chess in their business. So what do I mean by that? First off, let me give you guys a glimpse of what’s happening behind the scenes with me. I can’t give you all the details unfortunately but I’m going to give you some hints. So you’ll be able to see as I’m playing chess over the next 6 to 9 months.

I am making some very big, strategic decisions, things that on the outside will look stupid, like “Why did you do that Russell? That doesn’t make any logical sense.” And it won’t from the outside looking in, but the inside looking out, they’re all very strategic chess moves. I’m moving a piece here, I’m moving something here, I’m changing something here. And while you are able to see the movement of the chess piece, my guess is you will not be able to understand the overall strategy for a while.

And I wish I could tell it all to you, but I am someday going to write a book about this whole thing. So sometimes strategically you move a chess piece somewhere and someone ends up checkmating you, so I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. So I’m not calling my shot that it’s going to be flawless, but I’m definitely moving some chess pieces around.

But it’s all very strategic and I’m excited to kind of see what happens from it, and the growth and the changes, and the…I’m sure initially I’m going to probably offend some people, upset some people, I’m lose some customers in the short term, but in the long term it’s the essential movement of things that need to happen for the company to grow and for the value of the company to exponentially grow.

So like I said, some of the things won’t make sense right away. For example, Clickfunnels, our 5 year birthday is coming up, and for our 5 year birthday I’m doing some announcing of some stuff. So I’m announcing some things that are disappearing from Clickfunnels, and some announcing of things that are being added into Clickfunnels. And they’re very strategic. And it’s funny, as I was making some of these first strategic moves…

In fact, let me step down. You’re going to see on the birthday, at Funnel Hacking Live this next year, you’ll see the next set of the strategic moves happening. And then on my birthday, March 8th, you will potentially be seeing the next set of strategic moves. So there’s three dates for you to look at. Put it on your calendar to see the chess pieces moving. And I want you guys looking and thinking strategically, why is he doing this, what’s the reasoning. So those are the things that are happening.

But there’s a lot of thought going into them and it’s kind of fun. So what’s been fun for me recently, I’ve been looking at the people that I respect, people that are doing cool things, people that are having momentum, and what their business is. And some people just get lucky, but most people are strategically moving chess pieces around to do different things. So it’s really fun and interesting to watch.

It was kind of interesting, as I was trying to decide if I should make some of these strategic moves, I got really nervous and I had this weird impression to message Garret White, I mean Garret J White, I must say it right. So I messaged Garret and just kind of told him a little bit about what’s going on and just checked in with him, and then we started talking back and forth through text message. And  then he told me what he’s doing strategically, and it was super similar to what I was doing. It was kind of crazy how in alignment we were. It was like, the moves he’s making in his business and the moves I’m making in my business.

And so it was kind of fun, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, looking from the outside in  I would have thought you were crazy. But now that I understand the strategy behind it, I’m like oh my gosh, you’re actually brilliant. This is so cool.” So I’m watching it.

I’m watching, there’s someone I’ve had a chance to get to know a year ago through instagram, and it’s Nicole Arbour, some of you guys may know her, she made a video back 4 or 5 years ago called Dear Fat People, that went crazy viral. She got a lot of hate for it, a lot people loved it, but regardless created a lot of noise. And it was fascinating to watch her do that a couple of years ago and just kind of, that was kind of interesting, like what’s her strategy? Why is doing this? She’s going to make a lot of people angry, some people happy. But what’s the reasoning? But she’s very strategic in her thinking and in the moves she makes which is fascinating.

So I watched her over the last two weeks or so, and again, watching her strategically do her movement. So she made this video, some of you guys may have seen it, talking about Jay Shetty, and kind of calling him out on a lot of the stuff that he had plagiarized, and stuff like that. And she put this thing out there and it went crazy viral on Facebook, Instagram, I don’t know, probably other platforms as well. But between all of them it got tons of views.

And it was interesting because then, again, we’re all having the chance to watch this strategic chess pieces, after the fact, so that thing goes viral and it’s like, oh my gosh. And you see what she’s trying to do, she’s trying to get Jay to stop doing these things. And I’m not going to comment on that at all, because that’s beside the point of what I’m talking about now. But she made that video and then a few days later, she started seeding, “I’m about to do my next big video to expose the next person I want to expose.” I was like, oh my gosh, is this her strategy to go and expose a bunch of people, what’s she doing strategically? I want to figure what’s happening inside of her mind as I’m watching this, as she’s building up to it. And she did it on Insta-stories and everything, talking about, it’s coming, it’s coming.

And it’s like, boom, she launches it, and the next expose’ is about this person. And she kind of talked about the person, who it is, and all the bad things people say about this person, and then she said, that person is actually me. And it was fascinating because she basically aired her dirty laundry. She put out all the stuff that someone could potentially say bad about her and put it out there. What was cool is it took all the wind out of anybody who would try to retaliate and attack back against her because she’s like, “There it is.” And she did an expose’ on herself, which was really fascinating to see. And it was like, oh my gosh.

Anyway, so she put that out there, and that was the next video, and it picked up steam, there’s momentum with the first video, then the second video, the next expose’ that was actually about her, that was the next fascinating video in the sequence. And then she did another one exposing somebody who was trying to expose her. Anyway, it was just fascinating watching the different, it was strategic moves. Again, I don’t know the end goal or who she is trying to checkmate, who or what’s going to happen, but it’s just been fascinating watching as they’re happening, and catching on and being like, oh my gosh this is the strategy that she’s using to get attention and get views and to build her brand, whatever the things are.

I actually messaged my entire social media team on Saturday, I was like, ‘I want to make sure you guys are watching this. I’m not having all you guys watching it for the content, you can, that’s cool, but that’s not why. My purpose is strategically watch what she’s doing and leveraging the momentum of one video to the next, to the next, to the next. What do we have where we can do the same type of thing?” How do I make it so my Instagram or my YouTube or whatever, where it’s  not just random things that we’re putting out there, but there’s momentum and it’s moving towards something, and there’s strategically something happening to build the pressure, to build the noise, to get from point A to point B, point B to point C, and to move people through this journey and this conversation.

You know, I think one of my flaws is social media, up to this point it’s been everything is very much one off, here’s the thing we’re doing, here’s the thing we’re doing, and we’re kind of in and out and talk about the thing. Whereas it’s like, what if we turned this into a conversation, what if we turned it into a multi series of events, pulling somebody from thing to thing to thing, causing controversy or momentum or whatever. You know, I don’t think I’m a very controversial, I don’t seek for that, I don’t think my videos need to be controversial like Nicole’s were necessarily, but conceptually, strategically how do I create that in the voice that I have on social media?

Anyway, I just hope you guys are watching this game, watch the people at the highest level that are playing, watch what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. We’re always seeing things in hindsight, the person makes the strategic move and we see it afterwards, but start watching those and start noting, why did they do that, what was the purpose? Why did that video happen here? Why did this thing happen here? Why did Russell announce this? Why are they launching this now? What are the pieces? Why did they pull this away? What are the, what’s the purpose?

And I think if you guys start looking at that, you’ll start really enjoying this, it’s really fun. You know one of my favorite podcasts is a podcast called Business Wars, and it’s fun because it’s almost like a produced podcast. They pick two businesses that are at war and they produce like 7 or 8 episodes and they tell you the story behind this business war, and this is all in hindsight though, because you see it’s already happened. So it’s like Mac versus PC, Apple versus, excuse me, Mac versus PC, Addidas versus Nike, Marvel versus DC, Paypal versus EBay, all these different business wars that happen.

And you watch them and it tells you all the strategic moves that they make, but you’re seeing it all in hindsight, so it’s super fun. In fact, I think, I told the last time I spoke, I told everybody that they should drop out of school and just listen to business wars. That gives you history in business all wrapped into one super entertaining podcast.

But I digress, I like listening to that because you get to hear the strategy that happened in the past, in history that made these companies who they are. But man, we’re all sitting right now, having this opportunity to watch as companies are strategically doing things to build themselves right now. We’re reliving it, we’re in the middle of it.

>Elon Musk, I’m sitting right now in my Tesla, Elon Musk, he files all these patents for the Tesla and for these battery operating cars, and he’s doing the thing and then all the sudden he’s like, “I’m going to open source this and give access to everybody for free.” And you’re like, “Wait, why would you do that? It doesn’t make any sense? This is your intellectual property.” He’s like, “I’m going to open source it, give it to everybody and then everybody can build upon it, and then what’s going to happen because of that, other people are going to fund the building of this huge, all of the charging stations across America, because I can’t fund that by myself. So let me open source the patents, get everybody else building on it, and now we can all build this network that’s essential for my company to survive, which is these charging stations.”

So it opened it up and boom, that’s what kind of happened. So it’s just like, it’s just so fascinating and fun to watch these strategic decisions. One of the ones that happened, that’s happening on Clickfunnels birthday next, in two weeks from now. I told Myron Golden, and I love Myron, one of my favorite people ever, and I explained it to him and the next day he came back and said, “Do you realize what you’re doing here?” And I smiled and I’m like, “what? Tell me.” And he said, “If you, when you do this, this is what’s going to happen.” I was like, I kind of smiled, and he was like, “You already knew that.” I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s the strategy. That’s the chess piece I’m moving.” On the outside you’ll see the move, but I want you to stop and think, why? What’s the reason, what’s he trying to do here, what’s the purpose? And hopefully you guys have fun watching as we go.

So that’s what I got, I’m back to the office. I gotta get some work done today. I’m submitting the book tonight, so this is the end of the Traffic  Secrets book. You guys, I’m submitting it to the publisher. Whoo hoo. It is due at 5:30 pm tonight, so it will be out the door here soon. So wish me luck, and I hope you guys have a chance to read it here soon. Thanks again for everything and we’ll talk to you guys on the next podcast. Bye everybody.