How to get your list to pay for the thing you really want in life. On this episode Russell talks about the importance of building your list so that when you want something you can send the bill to your herd. Here are some of the awesome things to listen for in this episode:

-- Find out what it means to send the bill to your herd when you really want something.

-- Why Russell wishes he’d never taught this concept to his wife, Collette, years ago.

-- And find out who said they were going to “write themselves a swimming pool.”

So listen here to find out how you can get your tribe to pay for the things you really want.

If you’re not focusing on building a list and building a following, building a tribe, and building people, that’s problem number one. I’ve been talking about that for a long, long, long, long time. Many, many, many of our podcast episodes are about list building and focusing on building your tribe, and the Expert Secrets book is all about that. So if you haven’t been doing that, that’s the first step. You can’t send the bill to your herd unless you’ve got a herd. So you’ve got to build your tribe, you’ve got to build your people up, so that’s the first part of it.

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m streaming with you from the Tesla. Alright, so I got a Tesla, I was all excited, and for the most part it’s pretty cool, I’m not going to lie.

I’m not like a car guy typically, but the Tesla’s pretty cool. Except for the fact that, this is the third time now where I get my kids all the way to school and then I push the falcon doors for them to come up and the kids get out, and the doors don’t come up. They’re just stuck, and it’s like, “Obstacle detected.” And it’s like, there are no obstacles around here. And they’re like, “Well, we can’t stand up.”

And then the kids have to pile out the windows and stuff, and it’s its super embarrassing. So Elon Musk, you screwed me. You embarrassed my kids in front of their own school again. Why do you do that? Just make a car that knows that there’s no obstacle there, when there’s no obstacle there. Anyway, I digress, what we’re here today to talk about, I want to talk about something that I think is kind of fun to talk about, that hopefully gives you a mindset shift.

I actually had a friend yesterday who messaged me, and he’s trying to figure out a way to make some more money, because he’s trying to buy this house and wanted money for a down payment and stuff like that. And I messaged him back and I’m like, “I think you’re looking at this differently.” And I said, Dan Kennedy, who is probably the person I quote the most on this podcast, he used to always say, “If you want to buy something send the bill to the herd.” If you listen to any Kennedy stuff, he’d always refer to your list, your following, your tribe, your people, whatever, as your herd.

And he’d always say, “Yeah, if you want to go buy this thing, then send the bill to the herd.” What he meant is he’d have an idea for something, he’d go, “Okay, I want to go buy this new house, this new car, go on vacation or whatever, I’m not going to pay for that. I’m going to send the bill to the herd. So what’s an offer I can create that I can send out there to the herd, they will buy it, and they will therefore fund the thing I want to actually get.”

So I remember hearing him say it way back in the day and I used to always think that. Every time I wanted a new thing, it was like, send the bill to the herd. And it was funny because when Collette and I first, first, first got married, I guess we were in our, probably married a year, maybe two years at this point, and this is about the time I’m learning this whole internet marketing game.

And I remember because it was Christmas time and she wanted these new couches that were like, I don’t know, $3 or $4 thousand bucks. And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I am unemployed. I don’t have a job, I’m selling some stuff on the internet and hustling every once and a while. But I was like, I don’t have money to buy this couch that she wanted. But I wanted to be able to buy it for her.

So I remember I made this little promotion, and it was during Christmas time and I called it The Grinch Sale, and it was like, I told this little story about the Grinch and how his heart grew 3 sizes, and kind of put this sales page together, then I put together a really good offer. And I remember in the offer I said, one of the lessons about copy to justify why you’re doing something.

So in the copy I was like, “The reason why I’m doing this insane sale is because my wife wants this couch set, it’s like $3600 or whatever it was. And my goal is to have this promotion pay for it and then whatever.” And that was like part of the reason why I was doing the sale. And I did the launch and it was crazy because I think we sold like, I don’t know, I can’t remember the numbers, but it was like $36,000, ten times what we were expecting.

And I had never made that much money ever. It was just insane. I remember people buying it and sending me a letter like, “I hope you get your wife that couch.” Or like, “I didn’t even want this thing. I just wanted to help support you and get your wife that couch.” And I was like, “What? This is crazy.” All these people that bought the thing to help support my wife getting this couch. And I remember it was funny because after we did that I was like, “Okay, let’s go buy your dream couch.” And she’s like, “That’s a lot of money.” I’m like, “It’s just an email away hun. We just sent an email out to the list and it paid for it.”

And I learned that was a really bad thing to teach her all those years ago because ever since then, not always but every once in a while when we want something crazy she’s like, “Well, just send an email to your list.” Because she’s learned you just send the bill to the herd. Another really fun story that kind of relates back to this from the Beatles, Paul McCartney. It was funny, they said that he used to say this John Lennon, but he said it one time before he wrote, I think it was Help, but I might be wrong.

But before he wrote the song, he said, “Hey, let’s go write ourselves a swimming pool.” Because he wanted to build a huge swimming pool but obviously he didn’t want to pay for it, so he sent the bill to the herd. He, oh man, the sun is shining in my eyes. Sorry about that you guys. Anyway, he said, “Let’s go write ourselves a swimming pool.” He sat down and wrote a song, and then launched it, and it made enough money, more than enough money to pay for their swimming pool. So what was the lesson? He sent the bill to the herd.

So this lesson, this podcast episode implies a couple of things, number one is you’ve got to have a herd. If you’re not focusing on building a list and building a following, building a tribe, and building people, that’s problem number one. I’ve been talking about that for a long, long, long, long time. Many, many, many of our podcast episodes are about list building and focusing on building your tribe, and the Expert Secrets book is all about that. So if you haven’t been doing that, that’s the first step. You can’t send the bill to your herd unless you’ve got a herd. So you’ve got to build your tribe, you’ve got to build your people up, so that’s the first part of it.

The second part is shifting your mindset to that. It’s not like, “Ah, I can’t afford that.” It’s thinking, “How could I afford that.” Well, if I make an amazing offer, provide a lot of value, I can create something awesome that my list will like, and then they will finance the thing I’m trying to get. And that becomes a symbiotic relationship between you and your list. You provide the value, they provide your money, and you’re able to kind of get whatever it is you want in life. I remember before we moved to this house, I think I did an episode on this.

It’s probably way back in the archives somewhere, but I can’t remember off the top of my head. But I remember I wanted to buy this house and it was a couple of million bucks and I was just like, “Ugh, it’s so expensive.” The down payment was going to be, I don’t know, whatever it was going to be, it was at the time, crazy. I was like, if I created a $100,000 offer, and I sold to five people that would cover the down payment.

So I went and put together a $100,000 offer, and we pitched it and we had a bunch of people take it, and that paid for the down payment. So it’s like, it all comes back down to that. Alright, you’ve got a following, you’ve got a herd, got people, got a tribe, whatever you want to call it, right. Kennedy calls it a herd, which I don’t think is as appropriate, but that’s Kennedy for you.

In fact, it’s funny, they used to do, they had a day at their super conference called Herd building day, which was how to build your own herd, how to build your list. And I believe they had this company buy them 7 or 8 years ago, and the company was like, very politically correct.

They went through all the courses and tried to pull out things that they thought were disrespectful, and like, ‘Herd Building’ was disrespectful. So they pulled it out of all of Dan’s courses, which is insane, because that’s him and his personality and who he is and what he teaches people. I don’t know why I told you that story. It comes down to political correctness.

In fact, it’s funny as I’m writing this new Traffic Secrets book, the editors wanted me to pull out the word tribe because they say I’m talking about building a tribe because I guess apparently that’s offensive to some language or some people or something. And it’s like, just funny now. So I have to always caveat and preface me saying something, “This might be offensive to some people. I apologize in advance.”

Which cracks me up because there’s like 6 books on the New York Times Bestsellers list right now that have the ‘F’ word in the title. It’s like, you can tell people to go ‘F’ themselves, but don’t tell them that they are part of a tribe. I don’t get it. Anyway, sorry I’m back. Alright, this is one of those days you guys.

So with that said, send the bill to your herd. That’s the moral of this story. Build a tribe. If you don’t have it yet, start building it, and then figure out ways to send the bill to the herd. Be creative, what kind of offers can you create, what kind of things can you make for people, what are the things you can go and you can do? And as you do that provide value for them, they’ll provide value back to you, and you can literally write yourself a swimming pool by creating a new offer.

Alright, I apologize, not in advance, I apologize if I offended any of you guys in this episode, hopefully you learned something. And I’m going to go before it gets too much further down the rabbit hole. Thanks everybody, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.