A new way to look at your role as an expert or an influencer.

I haven't talked a ton about this publicly yet, because it's still happening. A couple places I've talked about so you may or may not have heard of this, but one of the big projects I'm doing right now is I'm actually building next door to the ClickFunnels HQ office, a library, a 20,000 square foot library. And people are like, "Why are you building a library. That makes no sense this, you're going to give people library cards?" I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm building this library curated with the books and the things that mean the most to me."

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What's up everybody? Good morning. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today we're going to talk about curation secrets. All right. I just dropped my kids off at school and I've been thinking about this for the last, man, couple months. I keep thinking about doing a podcast about it, and then I struggle, I can never remember the word curate. I always forget that word so every time I try to do it, I'm like, "Oh, what's that word? What's the word? It starts with a C."

Anyway, but I remembered this morning, so you're getting a podcast. I hope you're okay with that. So I want to talk about curation, that word curate, because I think that the future... People always ask me like, "What's the future? What's going to be the big thing in '20..." What year we in? 2021. So what's 2022, "What's the big thing? And what's the future?"

And it's interesting because I honestly believe the future for all people like us, for businesses, for brands, for influencers, for whatever you want to call yourself, is really understanding and mastering curation and from a lot different angles and directions. I come back and I look at what I've done over the last 20 years of my business, right? People always ask, "What are you? Are you an author, an entrepreneur or a speaker or whatever?" I'm like, "When all is said and done, if I really look at it, if I'm completely honest with myself, I'm a curator." That's what I do. I curate ideas, right? I go and I find the best ideas in the world and I curate them together and then I give them to my audience. Like you think about Dotcom Secrets, Experts Secrets, Traffic Secrets.

What are those books? Those books are me spending 20 years of my life curating ideas, right? I go and I've read hundreds of, maybe even thousands of these kind of books, and courses and podcasts and audience, and I go and I take these principles and these things, and I test them and I try them and I try to figure out what's going to work. And from all of the stuff, all of the learning, the ideas, the everything, I take all these things and I curate them into a way that I can engage my audience, right? And so for me the curation initially all happens through my books. So here's Dotcom Secrets, it's my curation of everything I've learned and experimented and tested on sales funnels.

And essentially, look, you notice for the most part... There are definitely things in all my books that are my thoughts, but for the most part, it's like, I took a framework of other people's thoughts, ideas, and I tested, tried all sorts of stuff. And from the curation, from the testing those things, out popped my frameworks. In fact, I was talking to this guy that goes to church with me yesterday about this. And he asked he's like, "How do you develop your frameworks?" And at first I didn't know how to answer. And I was like, "Well, it's kind of like I try to take the best from everybody, right? And it's kind of like grabbing sand and I throw it in this big sifter, right? And I'm sifting it out and I'm taking everybody's principles and I'm sifting it and all the sand's falling out and what's left behind is the truth, the principles, the core philosophies or ideas that are actual truth."

"And from there is where I build out these frameworks." And I think for all of us, it's kind of similar, right? We're going out there, we're studying, we're learning, we're testing, we're trying, we're figuring things out, whatever business, whatever market, whatever thing you're doing, and then from that, your frameworks kind of appear, right? They rise from the top after you're sifting and sorting through all the things that are being put out there and you're taking it back to your audience and you share like, "Here's the things that are working, here's what I figured out." And so you're curating ideas. And so it's interesting because I started thinking about that and I was actually talking to Dan Usher on my team and Dan... Sorry, I'm turning left here, make sure I don't get hit by a car live on my podcast.

All right we're good. Anyway, so Dan, I was talking about that. I was like, "I had this big realization that my role, I'm a curator, I curate ideas, right?" And then Dan kind of help take it to the next level. He talked about his favorite artist is Rufus, right? And so Rufus is, I think that's not the full name of the band. I'm probably messing it up. But anyway, for those who know this artist, that's a band or an artist, whatever, right? And Dan loves this person. Follows them, listens to all his things. He's one of his thousand true fans, right? Buys all the CDs, merch, everything. But what's interesting he says that Rufus, this band, they go and they curate things. So it's like, "This is our favorite art, this is our favorite things, this is our favorite..."

And so Dan just recently moved from Canada to Boise, bought his very first house or he is renting his first house, and when he is like, "I have this house now I got to buy furniture, I got to buy paintings or pictures and all this stuff," He didn't go and try to figure out, "Well, what's my taste, what's my style?" He said, "Okay, I trust Rufus. Rufus is my favorite band, but I also trust their style, I trust their design." And he went and he found stuff that these guys had already curated, like here's the best pictures, here's the best furniture, here's all these things.

And he just bought what these guys recommended. They had curated, he trusted this person, this band, this person that he trusted as a curator, right? Because he's got the best music, he's got the best taste, got the best everything. And he just took that and went and pimped out his entire apartment with Rufus stuff, right? Not just the Rufus's things, but things that they had said, "These are our favorite items," right? And basically, that person curated things together.

And I started thinking about this, in our world, when you start your own company or you start your own brand, right? People come in for a thing, people come into my world because they want to build funnels. But then they get to know me, they build a personality... they build a connection with me as a person, they start seeing all these other things that I do, right? And it's interesting because the questions I get most of the time nowadays, even in my inner circle, people paying 50 grand a year to be in this inner circle, and I open up for Q&A's and like, "What questions you got?"

The questions are rarely ever about marketing. They're about all these other areas of my life, right? They're like, "How do you do these things with your family? How are you able to keep balance with your family and your business and your religion, all these kind of things." I have a lot of people ask me about my religion, "I want to understand your faith more." I have a lot of people ask me about my supplements, right? Like, "How are you still in good shape? What supplements do you take? How do you eat? What's your eating protocols," right? "What's your morning routine?" People started asking me all these other things. They came to me for funnel building, right, but then they trust my opinion. And now they're asking me what I think about all these other things.

And so, obviously I haven't at this point done that but if I were to go curate a book on my supplement routines or curate a product on my eating or my religion or my personal development beliefs or all these different things because they came in and they're connected with me just like Dan is connected to these artists because he loves their music, but because he trusts them, likes, knows and trusts them, he's looking at the curation of all the things that they offer and they talk about and he's diving into all those things.

And I really think that's the future for all of us who are artists, who are influencers, who are creators, experts, whatever you want to call yourself, is people are going to come in for your core expertise but then they're leaning on you to curate concepts and principles and ideas in all aspects of their life. And so this kind of leads me to honestly what I feel is the next phase of my own personal mission.

I haven't talked a ton about this publicly yet, because it's still happening. A couple places I've talked about so you may or may not have heard of this, but one of the big projects I'm doing right now is I'm actually building next door to the ClickFunnels HQ office, a library, a 20,000 square foot library. And people are like, "Why are you building a library. That makes no sense this, you're going to give people library cards?" I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm building this library curated with the books and the things that mean the most to me."

And I've had this weird feeling where I keep getting drawn to these people who have died, who have written amazing books in the personal development, in the advertising space. And so in fact, recently I went out and I spent multiple seven figures acquiring Napoleon Hill, a huge Napoleon Hill estate, with a whole bunch of first edition copies of a whole bunch of stuff he's done. Over 250 pages of stuff that he, from his typewriter he hand-typed and then wrote his notes on and it never got published, a bunch of books that he wrote that never got published.

All these things I bought and I've collected them now, and old magazines and all these things from Napoleon Hill, but also Dale Carnegie. And also Orison Swett, who's the guy who started Success Magazine as well as his mentor and other... And I've been going down this rabbit hole, literally traveling the world, acquiring these old things. I've spent insane amounts of money in the last 45 days on eBay, acquiring all these books and things.

And I'm getting all of the best, the best, all of these.... the best personal development books, the old advertisers, the old business people and I'm collecting all their stuff, so I can start going through them and studying them and then curating them and putting them back together and something I can then give back to my audience saying, "Okay, I was able to go deep for the last two years on all of these, the personal development from the early 1800s till now and go through all the thoughts, all the philosophies, all of the things. And from these, I've tested in my own life, in lives of people that I've had a chance to work close with. These are the things that rose to the top," right?

Right now I'm going through the process of taking all of the sand, right? Literally I would say conservatively, I've bought a thousand books in the last, man, 60 days from people who have passed on in the personal development space and I'm taking this, this is the sand, right, and I'm going to be going through all of this material and sifting it out and sorting it and letting the sand kind of fall out and seeing what are the nuggets that are left behind, the things that are universal principles that are true today, tomorrow and forever, that I can then take and turn into frameworks so I can then give back to you guys. In fact heard Rich Schefren say this one time, he said, "My job, my role, is to think for a lot of other people." I feel like I'm the same way.

You could have gone and read the 300, 400 different marketing books, gone through 10, 15 years of testing and trial, signed up for the masterminds of courses, listened to all the podcasts, all the things I did over the last 20 years, you can go do that and go figure it out or you can trust me. If you trust me, trust me to curate together and say, "Boom, here's DotCom Secrets, here's Expert Secrets, here's Traffic Secrets, here's the core things you need to know." Right?

And for me, it's the same thing anyway, you can go and spend multiple seven figures on eBay, buying every old book on these topics and go through them and study them and test them and try them. Or you can come back to me as a curator and say," Look, I trust you, Russell." And I can say, "Cool, of all the stuff I went through after sifting and sorting, these are the things that rose to the top. Here's the frameworks I developed. Let me give these back to you now."

Right now, I'm doing the thing with Dan Kennedy's company. I bought Dan Kennedy's company. I got 40 years of intellectual property. I literally have hard drives with insane amounts of stuff on it. I'm going through there right now, and I'm sifting and I'm sorting and I'm curating and bringing the best stuff out, so I can come back to you guys and be like, "Boom, here's the stuff." And for me so far it's been so exciting. I'm having the time in my life doing it, but that's my role is I'm a curator. And eventually I'll curate stuff on my health beliefs. I'll curate stuff on my religious beliefs.

I'll curate things, all these things so that when you're coming to and you connect with me as an influencer or an expert, or whatever you want to call me, that you'll come for one thing. But then if you like the way that I live my life, if you like the things I'm doing, you'll probably look for other things like, "Well, what else does he have? What else does he recommend? What are the things that have given him the biggest impact? I want those things as well" Because that's what I'm realizing in my life is that that's my role. I'm a curator, but I wanted also for you guys to realize that you're probably a curator as well. You probably never looked at it that way, but you're curating ideas, concepts, principles, and you're sharing them with your audience, right?

And the better you become at this, the more talented you are at taking these ideas and simplifying them for your audience. Think about this, I read all these books, spent all this time in masterminds, and from there I wrote the DotCom Secrets book, which simplified all these principles, right? And then from there, we created software that simplified it even a step further. Our role is to take these principles and simplify them and simplify them and simplify them, and whoever can make them the most simple will be the person in the market who makes the most money.

So your job is to curate ideas, simplify them, if you can turn them into software, because that's one of the best ways to make money off anything, but it's that curation process. And then giving them back and like, "Boom, here's the most simple version of all this stuff. I did all the work for you. I've curated, I've simplified it. And I'm giving it back to you in a format that you can actually take and apply. And you're going to get a thousand years worth of thought and effort and work. And you can get it all in this book or this course, or this software," whatever it is, however you curate your stuff and bring it back to the market.

So I hope that that helps you guys to kind of look at your business and what you do and your role a little bit differently. I know for me it has, it's got me really excited when I'm like, "Okay, this is my role, I'm a curator, I'm getting paid to think for a lot of people. Therefore, I need to put in the time and the energy, the effort to go and find these things to put them together."

And someday, just so you guys know, this library I'm building's going to be amazing, because you'll walk in and the library's sectioned off based on things I'm passionate about, right? So there's definitely going to a religion section. And then in there under glass, like bolted glass, fireproof glass, will be all the first editions of some of the most amazing religious books that I've had a chance to purchase in the last year or so.

And then you go to the personal development section, there'll be like, "Here's all of the personal development books I've acquired." The first edition printings under glass. Then behind it will be all the physical versions of all of the books, but they'll be... Yeah, then same thing in business and advertising, same thing in all the areas of my life I'm passionate about. I'm again acquiring all the first edition copies of these different books to put them under a glass, and then also just tons of copies of all the other ones.

And so when someone comes in there and they're like, "I want to go deep with Russell." It's like, "Cool, here's the section library where we talk about this." You can go, you can find the actual things you can study and you can learn them or here's Russel's curated version of... Here's the book or the course or the thing that gives you the simplified version of it. So anyway, I'm excited, I'm geeking out. Hope you are as well. Hopefully that, by me recording this episode, I can remember the word curate, because I always forget that word, but that is the role that we are doing.

And the better you get at this, again, people will come in because they want to listen to your music, but then they're going to buy things based on your style of furniture and pictures on the wall or, in the example of Dan and his favorite artist, Rufus. Or with me, they come in for marketing advice but then hopefully here in the near future, they get personal development advice, health advice, health advice, and other things I am passionate about at the geek-out level that I think most people aren't able to.

So anyway, it's exciting. I'm going to curate something today for you. I hope you do as well. Thanks for everything guys. And we'll talk to you soon.