Lessons in entrepreneurship from my 7 year old son.
I want everyone to be out there hustling and striving, and trying to figure out ways to start businesses, and make money and work extra hours and things like that. Because that’s how you get ahead in life, that’s how great things start happening. It’s always interesting to me how many people tell me that they don’t have time to start a business because they don’t have, you know, the resources or things like that. Where I’ve got a seven-year-old out there scrubbing toilets to try to earn money so that he can get what he’s looking for, and I think too many people -- too many of us -- use copouts and use excuses like, “I don’t have time” or money or resources or whatever it is to start a business.
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Hey everyone! Welcome to the Marketing In Your Car podcast. This is Russell Brunson, and I’m going to welcome you to today.
Okay, so today’s a beautiful day. Yesterday it was 108° here in Boise, which in insane, and it’s supposed to be 108° again today.
It’s going to be hot, but I woke up this morning to a really funny experience.
About 7:30 the phone rang, and I picked up and answered it and it was a lady asking for Dallin. Dallin is one of my twins, he’s seven-years-old, and I said, “Well, Dallin is one of my seven-year-old sons. Can I help you?”
She said, “Oh, sorry. Somebody had filled out an application for a job for him, and I was just calling to return the call. I’ll take him off our list.”
And I was like, “What in the world? Someone filled out a job application for my seven-year-old son?” and so then my wife stumbles out of bed to come find out, who it was that called, and I told her.
She starts laughing hysterically, and anyway…
So here, let me tell you the backstory to this story because it’s actually pretty awesome. So Dallin, actually both my kids, Dallin and Bowen, both my twins.
A little while ago, whenever I’m like dad, my wife’s out of town where she gone wherever, I like to take the kids treasure hunting. Which basically means we go to pawn shops, and I try to find silver coins and then they try to find treasures too, so it’s really fun.
So anyway, one of the pawnshops we were at, probably six months ago, they found Super Mario Brothers U, which I thought that meant Super Mario Brothers University.
And anyway, it turns out all it means is it’s Super Mario Brothers for the Wii U, and the Wii U turns out to be a whole separate console, so I bought this game at a pawnshop, take it home.
We can't play it, and we find out we have to spend another $350 to get the console.
Now, I already think my kids play way too many video games, and I’m not really into having them go and have another console. So I said, “Hey, well, if you want this money, you’ve got to earn it.”
So I went and got a jar and on the front of it we wrote “Wii U $350,” and they’ve been saving all their pennies and their coins and their money in this jar to try to earn enough money for the Wii U.
And it turns out one of my sons, Dallin, is a lot more entrepreneurial than the rest, and is just trying all sorts of things to figure out how to make money. For example, we went down to St. George, and we found this gypsum mine, and we found these gypsum rocks. We collected all these rocks, and he’s been trying to sell these really cool looking rocks to everybody he sees, to get money for the Wii U.
In fact, he sold one of our neighbors a rock for $10, which was amazing.
So he’s out there closing sales, and hustling and doing deals. He keeps telling me like, “Let’s just go to the store, and we’ll just give them all these rocks. They’ll trade me for a Wii U.”
But he can't quite understand that, so we keep trying to do stuff. So on Sunday night, this was two days ago, he wanted to figure out how he could make the money, and so my wife put together a chore chart for him.
So he’s been waking up early every single morning and scrubbing the toilets, folding the blankets, making his bed, dusting the house, everything in the world he can do to figure out how to make money.
And so, he’s working, you know, all day yesterday and he earned a dollar from all his work, and he’s all excited. Then he realized like, “Man, it takes a long time to earn a dollar. I’ve got $350 I’ve got to make.”
So he’s talking about doing garage sales. He asked me if I had any work, he could come and work for me, and he says he’s really good doing drawings so he can draw for me.
But every morning he’s been begging me to come to the office so he can make money. And anyway, it’s just fun seeing this little entrepreneur.
So I guess yesterday, he was on the computer and he went to Google. He typed in “jobs for kids.” He clicked on some link, and a form came up, and he went and told my wife, and just said, “Hey, I need…”
You know “what’s our address,” “what’s our phone number,” and just asked all this stuff, and she didn’t really know why, but right now they’re at the age where they’re learning how to spell and how to do stuff.
So they always come and ask us like, “Dad, how do you spell roses?” “How do you spell this?” “What’s my phone number?” so didn’t really don’t think too much about it.
He wrote down all this, you know, then the address or the phone number and wrote down everything. Went back into the computer on this form, and actually filled out a “Help Wanted” for online, and that was the phone call, was them following up with his call.
My guess, it was probably some kind of call center trying to sell him a business opportunity, but it made me kind of laugh. So that was my young son’s entrepreneurial journey, so far today.
It’s two days into his thing, and he’s trying to make money for this Wii, and it just made me smile, because it reminded me of me when I was his age.
I was doing everything I could think of to hustle for money, because I just had these dreams of all the stuff I wanted to buy, and what I wanted to do and be in life, and I knew I needed the money to do that.
And it kind of makes me smile because I know that’s how I got to where I’m at today, is because of those types of things, and I just want to encourage all of us right now, depending on where you are in your life.
Look at my son, Dallin, look at his example, and I want you guys to emulate that. I want everyone to be out there hustling and striving, and trying to figure out ways to start businesses, and make money and work extra hours and things like that.
Because that’s how you get ahead in life, that’s how great things start happening. It’s always interesting to me how many people tell me that they don’t have time to start a business because they don’t have, you know, the resources or things like that.
Where I’ve got a seven-year-old out there scrubbing toilets to try to earn money so that he can get what he’s looking for, and I think too many people -- too many of us -- use copouts and use excuses like, “I don’t have time” or money or resources or whatever it is to start a business.
Whereas, if you just go out there and do it and hustle and try and stay up late, and work a second job and do extra work for, whatever it is, to be able to get to whatever it is your dream goal is at the end of the rainbow.
So I just want to kind of leave off with that, and the other thing is I was writing a sales letter yesterday. One of the things I wrote in there was about how good is the enemy to great, and I just want to kind of touch on that as well.
You know, like a lot of us, if you’re not where you want to be in life in whatever aspect, it could be business, it could be personal life, it could be religious life, whatever it is, the reason why most of us don’t live great lives, the reason why most people don’t have great marriages is because they have good marriages.
The reason why most people have great business because they have good business, and if you’ve ever read the book Good to Great, that’s what it talks about is just how good is the enemy to great, and it keeps us a lot of times from achieving what we want.
And I just wanted to let everyone know that you shouldn’t settle for “good.” There’s too much amazing stuff that this life has to offer, and good really is the enemy to great. So set your goals high and work like crazy. Do whatever it takes.
If you’re a kid who can't even type yet, figure out how to get online, get your address from your parents, whatever it takes.
But do what Dallin is doing and go out there and hustle, and if you do, good things can happen.
So that’s where I leave it off today. I appreciate you guys listening to my podcasts. If you go to DotComSecrets.com, you’ll notice that I started getting these images designed.
I found this really cool guy in the Philippines.
He’s making these little podcast images, and he’s doing a great job so far, so there’s going to be a whole bunch of little podcast images all over our site for each one.
Like there’s, for Mary Poppins, the last steps, I talked about Mary Poppins. He’s got a picture of me holding an umbrella and just kind of some fun stuff.
So come check out our blog! Come say “hey “over there, if you like the podcast. I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk to you again soon!
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