How to create true change that actually lasts… On today’s episode Russell talks about how our society has always functioned in a “Demand Relationship” and how it will never bring about real change. Here are some of the awesome things to listen for in this episode:

-- Find out what it means to be in a demand relationship and why it can only work that way for so long.

-- Find out why shaming people into change doesn’t work.

-- See why inspiring action is the way to make true change.

So listen here to find out how you can inspire true change within your own community.

I think all of us have a calling, and it’s like this is something that if you felt before it tugs at you and you’re trying to go out there and you’re trying to make change, trying to make people’s lives better. And that’s why we create businesses, that’s why we do all the things we do. But it’s difficult because when we first start, at least for me, when I first started to try to do this, I didn’t have a very good skill set. I was just like, “You have to buy my stuff. What are you dumb? Just buy my stuff.” And that was kind of my level of skill set in persuasion, was that. It was just like, ‘I promise you this stuff is great. Just do it. Just listen to me. Just trust me.” And guess what happened when I tried to persuade people that way?

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m excited today to be talking about marketing and persuasion and things that I think can help us in this insanely crazy time that we are living today.

So with that said, let’s queue up the theme song, and when we come back we’ll talk about persuasion, demand relationship and how to actually create change.

Alright everybody, so I’m sure you have been logging onto the internet over the last little bit, and you have probably seen all the things that are happening. I do not want to get into specifics, I do not want to get into politics, I do not want to get into anything because that’s outside of my calling.

My calling is, I’ve been called to serve entrepreneurs and to help them, and to give them a voice and help them to be able to create the change in the things that they believe in. So I want to go give you guys a skill set today to help you, as you are trying to create change in whatever capacity you want it to be. And that’s where I’m going and that’s as far as I’m going.

So it’s been interesting just in the climate, it’s just so funny how everyone’s got to kind of pick their words a little carefully now, which I don’t enjoy. But you know, obviously the climate right now is different than any other time in our history, at least my history personally. And there’s a lot of stuff happening and I see a lot of people who are trying to create change for things they believe in, which is amazing. Which is why I think we are here, we’re here, we’re called to go serve different groups of people.

I think all of us have a calling, and it’s like this is something that if you felt before it tugs at you and you’re trying to go out there and you’re trying to make change, trying to make people’s lives better. And that’s why we create businesses, that’s why we do all the things we do. But it’s difficult because when we first start, at least for me, when I first started to try to do this, I didn’t have a very good skill set. I was just like, “You have to buy my stuff. What are you dumb? Just buy my stuff.” And that was kind of my level of skill set in persuasion, was that. It was just like, ‘I promise you this stuff is great. Just do it. Just listen to me. Just trust me.”

And guess what happened when I tried to persuade people that way? It didn’t work very well. So I had to start learning persuasion. How do you get somebody to move? How do you get somebody to care? How do you create empathy? How do you….all these different things? And it’s taken me 15+ years or more to kind of learn these things. And I’m definitely not perfect at it. But you know, I’ve had some success in my life because of it.

And I want to just, I want to give some tools for anybody, for everybody who’s listening, because there are different things that are happening, and I think that if we really want change to happen in any area of our life, we need to increase our skill set to become better. So a couple of things that I want to talk about. Number one, I am going to quote the great Stacey and Paul Martino. They are funnel hackers, Stacey spoke at Funnel Hacking Live two years ago.

And if you know anything about them, they have a company called Relationship Development, and they help couples, not just couples, they help anyone in a relationship, which could be coworkers, could be boss/employee, could be whatever. And I’ve been through a lot of different training for relationships and marriage, and all sorts of stuff, and they’re stuff is by far the best I’ve seen. So if you have a chance to study them, do.

They’ve got a really cool podcast called the Relationship Transformers, and they go deep into this stuff. They’ve got live events that I’ve been to, they’re awesome. I’m hoping someday they write a book, but they haven’t yet. So we’ll keep on crossing our fingers. But one of the concepts that they talk about that I think is so important for us to understand today, in fact, they moved to Boise recently, and last Sunday we went on a walk with them and kind of talked about all the crazy stuff that’s happening right now.

And she said, Stacey said something really powerful. She said, “The reason why they’re struggling is they’re all using demand relationship.” So they have this whole concept called demand relationship, which is brilliant. And again, you need to go through their events, listen to their podcast to really understand it. We’ve talked before about doing a live event with them.

Maybe we’ll try to do something like that soon. We’ll stream it here from Boise headquarters just so you guys can learn more about demand relationship. But the concept is, demand relationship is the thing that us humans, as a society, have used over the last, I don’t know, however many years we’ve been here on this planet to get what we want.

So demand relationship is basically, in fact, it’s funny, you see it in school, you see it at home, you see in almost every relationship where there’s a power player, and then there’s the lesser person. And the power player demands that a person does the thing. And for generations that worked. Until the lesser person, I can’t remember what they call them, there’s the power player, which is like the person demanding the thing, and then there’s the other person. And a demand relationship works until the other person has the ability to leave.

And it’s interesting, we talked about why this is why kids, the parents are the power player and forcing the kids to do the thing, and as soon as the kids turn 18 it’s like, they leave and they just disappear and they go crazy because they’ve been under this demand relationship their whole life. The parents are like, “yeah, I’ve been forcing my kid to do good, so therefore they’re going to be good.” And it’s like, that’s not actually how it works.

They may be good under your reign, under your thumb, but the second they have a chance to leave they’re gone. And they talk about this a lot in marriages as well. A lot of times in a marriage there’s a demand player who is in charge of everything, and he demands whatever is going to happen. And that worked in marriages forever until the divorce laws became a thing. And then as soon as people got divorced they could leave, then demand relationships crumble. And you think about this in business it’s the same thing.

If you’re a boss and you’re a demanding person, the person is free to leave, it crumples. But that’s the only skills that we have because that’s what we’ve seen happen throughout time. We’ve seen this happen in governments, we’ve seen it happen with our families, we’ve seen it happen with our parents, we’ve seen it happen in offices, at school, everything. Our whole brain has been wired with this thing called demand relationship.

And what’s crazy about Stacey and Paul’s work is their whole job is to rewire our brains to not do demand relationships, which is hard. Especially when it’s the pattern that we’re all so familiar with. And what’s interesting as I’ve been watching this with all the controversy happening online, and the people who are trying to create change, instead of going about it the way that actually causes truthful change, which again, Stacey and Paul call this relationship development and they have a whole system and stuff.

But instead of that, everybody is going to demand relationship because that’s what they know, that’s what they understand, that’s what they think is going to work. So coming in, they’re demanding people to believe what they believe and to say what they say and they’re trying to force people. And right now, they’re getting some traction.

People are scared and they’re shifting and there’s a power player and they’re forcing their hand and they’re saying the thing that they want them to say, but it’s not creating true, actual change. And then I was looking on Instagram and Neil Strauss, who by the way is awesome. Some context, Neil Strauss, he’s written a ton of books. He’s like a ten time New York Times Bestseller.

But I found out about him, he wrote this book called the Game, which is how to pick, how to be a pick up artist or something, which is kind of a famous marketing book because it teaches persuasion and all these cool things like that. Anyway, so when we were first launching Clickfunnels, I went and built funnels for a whole bunch of people because I wanted to just make, build cool funnels.

And so we flew out and did funnels for a lot of cool people, and one of the people was Neil Strauss. I didn’t really know him that well, the only thing I knew about him was this book he’d written called the Game, but I didn’t know much about him. And we hung out for a night while we built a funnel for him.

And he legitimately is one of the neatest, one of my favorite people I think I’ve ever met. Just, he had an event the next day and he stayed up until like 4 in the morning with us talking and asking questions and just a fascinating human. I really respect Neil. Anyway, I digress. So he posted on Instagram the other day something was just so powerful. He said, “Shaming someone into action creates acting. Inspiring someone into action creates change.” And I was like, “Wooo, dang.”

And he’s posting this in the middle of this chaos. He’s seeing it too. You can shame someone into action, which creates acting. Or you can inspire someone to action, which creates change. Stacey and Paul talk about this also in their training. It’s like, you know demand relationships is like forcing somebody to do what you want them to do. But the opposite of that is transformation through inspiration.

I’m probably messing up some of the stuff, you should buy everything that they put out because they’ll help you understand it better. But you know, transformation through inspiration. Like if you inspire people, it makes them want to transform themselves. So just like here, Neil Strauss, “Inspiring someone into action creates change.” How do you inspire someone? That’s different.

You know, I’m obviously religious and I bring in Christ and I think about Christ and he came and he ministered here on this earth, he wasn’t the one out there forcing people to change. He was out there teaching and inspiring and setting a perfect example for us to look at and to model. And by looking at Christ’s example, inspired us to want to change. It inspired us to want to become better.

And if you read the bible, if you read any of the religious books out there, it’s us learning about Christ’s life because when we learn about his life and in spite of what happened to him and everything, he kept caring and kept loving. And it’s like, oh my gosh, that inspiration of a human is what actually creates change. So I just wanted to share this with everybody because I know today we’re fighting and arguing about one topic, tomorrow it will be something else, but each of you guys more importantly, I believe is in your own sphere of influence.

You’ve got opportunities to help people. And this could be in your marriage, it could be in your family, it could be with your, the people you serve inside of your community, whatever that thing is. So the more you understand the demand relationship, coming in and trying to force people to believe or to do, it again like Neil says, “Shaming someone into action creates acting.” It’s going to create acting. They may do it for a little bit, but it’s not how you really change someone.

The way you really do it is you inspire them. That’s true persuasion. That’s where you actually get people to change, not just to get them to act. And it’s hard. It’s more difficult. Demand relationship is way easier. It’s way easier to yell and to force someone to become a power player and push somebody into doing what you want them to do. It’s harder to change yourself to be able to learn, “How can I inspire these people to change? How can I create my message, tell my story in a way that makes them want to change, that inspires them?”

Again, inspiring someone into action creates change, as opposed to demand relationshipping them and becoming the power player, making less noise and forcing them to start acting, but not actually create real change. So anyway, I would just say for all of us who are trying to learn how to persuade and to lead, especially in these times where it’s hard and it’s difficult, and every word you say you get destroyed online. Positive or negative, I’ve seen some of my best friends who have just gotten beat up. I got beat up. My friends got beat up for literally saying anything. Anyway, I won’t get into it.

But just understanding if you really want to create change it comes down to you. It doesn’t come to you shaming somebody into acting, it comes into you inspiring someone into action. And it’s harder. It’s going to be harder for you. It’s going to be way easier to be demand relationship and to yell and be angry and be mean. It’s going to be way harder for you to learn how to inspire someone, but that’s the only way to create real change.

So I want to encourage all of you to start learning those things. How do you tell your story better? How do you become the person you need to be so people want to follow you? What did Christ have to do? He led a perfect example and people followed him. Even with that, he was you know, people destroyed him, I mean, he was murdered for it. So it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s how you create true change that lasts.

So I hope that helps all of us as we’re navigating this crazy time. It will probably just keep on getting crazier, at least until these elections are over. I don’t even care who wins, I just want this thing to be done with. Election years are never fun. Especially now that we have this internet thing where we’re all connected and we all have a chance to tell our opinions.

I will not have an opinion until this election is over. But I will try my best to be a good person, try to inspire change, and if I can do that for someone out there, that makes this a win. So anyway, I appreciate you all, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this and I hope that it inspires you to go and look deeper, start understanding this concept of demand relationship and figure out how to get yourself out of it.

Go study Stacey and Paul, go look in iTunes under Relationship Transformer podcast, look for that relationshipdevelopment.org, go and buy their stuff, study their things, the quicker you can learn this concept and how to break it, the better. Anyway, appreciate you all, thanks so much for everything and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.