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522 - Jay Abraham Q&A Interview - Part 3 of 4

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522 - Jay Abraham Q&A Interview - Part 3 of 4

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On today's episode, you get to hear part 3 of a recent interview Russell did with Jay Abraham.

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We started designing and building this big 20,000-square-foot library with statues of Atlas and a bunch of cool things... One of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill and so I went and I found a whole bunch of first edition Napoleon Hill books like The Laws of Success three years before it was ever published... I'm building this amazing library of learning and entrepreneurship where people can come and learn directly from these manuscripts that nobody has seen in hundreds and hundreds of years.

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Transcript:

Russell Brunson: Well, so my friends welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. You had a chance to listen to two of the four parts of my interview with Jay Abraham. Hopefully, you're enjoying them so far. This episode is the third installment. In this one, we're going to talk about a whole bunch of other cool things that Jay asked about. We talk about how we grow our companies. We talk about the "Dream 100." I talk about endorsements and collaborations. We talked about how Jay and Tony Robbins worked together and how I worked with Tony Robbins. We talk about the three P's; passion, purpose, and possibility. We talked about the fact that what we do actually matters.

We talk about the ripple effect that you and your business and your ideas can have upon the world and a whole bunch of other things. Welcome back to the third part of this exciting interview with Jay Abraham. I hope you enjoy it. If so, please let me know. Please take a screenshot of your phone and post on social and tag me. That way I can see which stories you guys are liking the most and which ones resonate. Hope you enjoy this episode. We'll see you guys next week for the exciting conclusion of my interview with Jay Abraham.

Jay Abraham: I mean, I was so blessed that I had so many mentors when I was younger, but I used to hear all the time, the sooner you get your first sale, the sooner you get your second. The sooner you get your second, the sooner you get your third and you should think that way. But people go, "Well, I only sell this." Then I'll say, "Why? You know, they buy these other things and you know, if you sold the first thing and the lesser things, you get lots more of these." But people consequential critical. I don't know if it's integrative, but thinking about all the logical correlations that define somebody. I mean, we did it. I mean, I'll tell you a fun story and this is not tangential ADD. It will help people. You probably know this, but I was involved in all these ... I mean, I'm no longer my claim to fame, but we did an entrepreneur magazine when nobody even knew what the word meant.

We had to send out letters, Russell that had the Webster's dictionary explanation of what it meant, and also how to pronounce it. Serious. Swear to God. I mean, I remember the magazine you were subscribing to only too well. There were a bunch of them like that then. What was the point of? Oh! But this was so interesting. There's two different elements. We thought our market was just people who wanted to start a business. But then we realized it's anybody just wanted to make more money! We guys went to commodities training. We went to options training. We went to real estate flipping training. We went to people who were buying a career training and all of them worked.

Then we started buying those kind of businesses and gross selling because it was at the same market. Instead of making this much or losing ... We might have lost on the first transaction, but it wasn't really a loss. That was just the cost of getting started in the monetizing relationship. Very interesting. But I had this great point. I love that. I mean, Jesus, you're one of the super colossal affiliates. You've used that for your other businesses for this. Now you have a 100,000. It's sort of cool. Captively you have this audience, that's not inconsequential. Talk a little bit about the power. You may know this. I mean, I have so many Russell, so many distinctions that I forget about most of them, but we've done billions of dollars when I was active in joint ventures, strategic alliances, host beneficiary endorsement, co-branding. All these things. I don't think in the Japanese culture, they realize how powerful that is because it's a very "me against you" and I'm very private. But I think that's a terribly inhibited and limited attitude about growth.

Russell: Yeah. In fact, I initially learned all this stuff from you. I remember listening to your CDs. My wife and I driving around in our car and you talking about host beneficiary and all these strategic partnerships. A couple things I learned, number one is: I look at like our customer. Right. We have the mindset. We think that like, "Oh. They're our customer. We own them. That they only buy from us." The reality is, it's not true. I think about myself, like the things that I buy. I buy like 10 different things or 20 different things. Every market I'm excited by it. Right. In health and fitness market, I buy all the things. Watches. I like watches. I buy all the watches. I buy all the training courses. I bought everything from you and from Dan and from all the people.

People aren't just buying from you. By thinking that they are, it limits your ability to grow. I started looking like, "Hey. Well, who else besides me, are they purchasing things from? I need to get to know those people and be partners with them and like figure out that." That was a big part of it. I can't remember where you said this, but somewhere you talked about ... You said, "Look at the product service you have. What are all the things that somebody needs before your product and service and what are all the things somebody needs right after that?" That started to opening my eyes. Like, "What are all the different things? Like, what are all different ways to do this?"

What I started doing in my business and actually I learned this coin from Chet Holmes. I think you were friends with Chet before he passed away. But Chet had this concept that he called the "Dream 100." We started in our company, we built out what we call "A Dream 100." These are a hundred people who already have all of our customers congregated together. They have them either on a Facebook group or an email list or a blog or somewhere. They've already grouped our customers. I can go and I can buy ads and target those people, which is good. Good example is Tony Robbins. Right. Tony Robbins has got three million followers on Facebook. I can buy ads and show my ads to Tony's audience, but it's so much more powerful to have Tony promote it.

So I'm going to do both. I know Tony's one of my "Dream 100." I'm going to target his audience to sell my things to his people, but I'm going to also try to build a relationship with him. For me, it took me about a decade. I got to know Tony and built a relationship and about a decade into it, he promoted one of my books. He did a Facebook Live and interviewed me on his books. That one Facebook Live ended up getting like five million people who watched that video. Tons of people want my book and it was amazing. Tony and I aren't competitors, but we both serve the same core audience. People who are high achievers who are trying to change the world. That was just one "Dream 100" person. The next thing I did is I said, "Okay. Who are all the people in my market that have a podcast?"

I'm not sure if it's the same, but I went to iTunes. I went to the podcast directory and there's a business section. Then it categorizes all the business podcasts from number one down to I think, a hundred. I said, "Here's a hundred people that have my audience that are listening to them in their ears." I went and I got the address of every single person who has a business podcast and I send them a copy of my book. I send them gifts and I send them packages in the mail. I tried to build a relationship and within a week or two of doing this, I got calls from five or six of the people that had the top 20 or 30 podcasts. A week later I was on their podcast and I've sold tens of thousands of copies of my books and software from these podcast interviews.

I'm just looking like, "Who were the people that already have my dream customers?" I'm going to find those people, get to know them, and then figure out how I can get in front of their audiences. When you do that ... You know this more than anybody, but it shortcuts your success. I could have bought podcast ads for five years to get as many leads as I got off of me being on the top podcasts, being interviewed for an hour at a time, as opposed to just a 32nd ad that would've cost me $20,000. It's crazy. It's way more efficient and just a better way to do it.

Jay: Yeah. You're leveraging all the trust, the goodwill, and the intimacy of a podcast interview with somebody that admires you and is curious about what you know, that they don't. The best thing about, I think a great interviewer is that they are not trying to show you how bright they are. They're trying to be an advocate for their audience. When you have that, then they're showcasing what you know, because they want to help translate and transfer that knowledge to their audience. When you can find those kind of hosts or bloggers or whatever it is, Matt, then you've hit what we call the mother load.

Russell: Yeah. It's crazy, because first off you start building these relationships and sometimes you become your best partnerships. I'm actually flying out to Tony's house tomorrow. We're flying out to go to spend some time. Like how cool is that? But it came from me trying to build that relationship. Right. You start building relationships with people. That's like such a powerful part of it. But then like you said, you get one person to say yes, one blogger's got a big blog who decides to write a blog post about your new product. That's the equivalent of you spending a 100,000 dollars on Facebook ads. It's just-

Jay: You know, not to step on you, but I'm going to go back in time. I'll give a true story. Most people don't know this. In 1991, I was helping Tony's company and I was very helpful and we achieved something really cool. We figured out the breakthrough for his predecessor to all the masters. It was called Mastery University in Hawaii. But that wasn't the story. Afterwards, he learned ... I never talked to him. I always talked to his president. He got ahold of me and he wanted me to speak in Hawaii. I asked in exchange of no fee, I said, "Why don't you interview me?" Because he's a great interviewer. He said, "What do you want to sell?" I said, "Nothing." I said, "Just do an interview for me." It was really interesting because he is a great interviewer and he did a great interview of me.

You probably don't know this. I prepared 40 pages of notes that I sent to him and it took me weeks. You know he's always late. He's always late when you go see him for anything if it's business and he was late. Pardon me. But I was supposed to do it at 11. We didn't start till three. But when he came there, he gained a lot of my admiration because he had notes, not just on every page and not just on every paragraph Russell, but on every sentence. What transpired was ... I'm telling this protracted, because I'm telling it to you because we don't talk much or at all. What happened was we started at three and we went until three in the morning. The only reason we stopped ... This is when they had what was called a 'DAT" which was a mini version of a VHS.

We ran out. We were on a roll. But what happened was they took 12 hours of interviews and they turned it into the two-hour power talk that became a classic. He had about 40,000 subscribers, which he put it out to. But I put out two million of them and that transformed my brand because not just his stature, but the kind of quality interaction we were having with each other. People don't realize how powerful endorsement, collaboration, access to markets. Another point that people don't realize, everybody wants the biggest ones. That's very, very astute most of the time. But sometimes the smaller ones have a connection to their audience because they're terrible marketers and the people are responding in spite, not because of their marketing acuity. Those people, even though they don't have the quantity when they encourage someone to buy from you or deal with you or respond to you, then the response on a relative basis is outrageous.

Russell: Yeah. No, I agree. In fact, I think for most people it's way better to start at that level. Because I remember when I first got started, I'd reached out to people like you and Tony and stuff. I was just this little kid in college and nobody responded and that's okay. But instead of being upset, like if all this doesn't work, I said, "Okay. Well, I'm going to start doing partnerships with people around my same size." I found five or six people. I went to some events. I got to know them and I was like, we built a relationship. Then we all started kind of cross-promoting each other and eventually, all of our businesses got a little bigger to the point where we were at the next tier of business. Then I started getting to know all these new people and started talking to them and eventually our businesses grew. Do that for three or four years eventually you're at the level of your peers and all of a sudden, now they'll return your calls.

Because they've seen you in all these different places and you keep showing up over and over and over again. Then they're like, "Oh. This person's actually putting in the time and the effort and they're for real." That gives you access to these people that were once your mentors that you just dreamed about, now you can be on the call. I'm right now with you, which is insane. This is so fun for me. So ...

Jay: Yeah. Sure. Thank you. It's more ditto. Let me ask you this. I mean, you evoke. You avervest what I call the three P's, which are passion, purpose, and possibility. How do you keep that? What do you fuel that with?

Russell: That's a good question. This is something that was confusing me at first because when I got started, I was in college and I was like, "I got to make money. I got to get money. That'll be the coolest thing in the world." That was my driving force. Then I made some money and if anyone who's done this, you make some money, and then you're like, "Huh. That was it. That wasn't quite what I thought it was. I thought I was going to feel different." Then you do and you don't feel different. Then I start chasing it some more and maybe I need more money. That'll make me feel different. I chased that for a while. At that point I was just like, this is not like what I was hoping it was going to be.

Luckily for me, somewhere in that window of time, I had a couple of students who had bought some of my things and something happened and they actually had success with it. In fact, I remember one of them was this guy and his wife and they had two little kids and they had used something. They bought one of my courses. They'd used it, they'd applied it and it changed their life. I remember they sent me a video telling the story and they were crying and I started crying. I was like, "Whatever that feeling is, that's, the thing I thought. I was chasing that and that feels amazing. I want more of that." Then shifted from me trying to chase to figure out how to make money, to shifting to chase that feeling. Where it's like, as I create, I make the lives of my people I'm being called to serve better.

I get that feeling back. For me, that was the shift. I really figured out at that point, like, "Okay. These are my people. I want to serve entrepreneurs. How am I going to do that? I don't know?" I started trying to figure things out and trying to make it simpler and simpler. As I got better at doing it, and the more I had to focus on serving them, the simpler our software got. We made software make it easier. I wrote books that made it simpler. I tried ways to make their lives easier. Then more success stories started coming and then that started making me feel good. Right. It's interesting about once a week, we have a big company meeting at ClickFunnels and we have a session at the very end. It says, "What we do matters."

Where we pick one of our entrepreneurs and we tell the story and it's not like, "Hey. So we made a lot of money." But it's like, for example, one of them is Kaelin Poulin. Caitlin came into our community. She didn't have any money, but she had had her own personal weight loss transformation. Lossed a bunch of weight and then she went through our programs. She ended up launching a company that grew really big called LadyBoss. I think over a million women were on their list and over a 100,000 women had a transformation where they'd lost weight. They'd had more health. They were happy. For example, we tell Kaelin's story and said, "Look. This is one person who we interacted with."

The ripple effect from her going through our programs and using our software was a 100,000 women lost weight. Those 100,000 women, then they went back home, and then they had their families and their kids. Right. Plus, for LadyBoss, that company now they've got like 80 or 90 employees. It's those employees and then their families. That's one entrepreneur. The ripple effect that had on the world is huge. We have a 100,000 people using ClickFunnels. It's every week we share one of those stories. For me, that's the thing that keeps me why I keep doing this. I'm so excited. It's just like, "Dah. That feels so good." You see something you created or you developed and it changed someone's life like that. That's the fuel, at least for me, that keeps me motivated.

Jay: That's beautifully articulated. Thank you. I'm going to ask two more questions and then I'll see if Hero is on if he wants to ... before you run out of time. Because I don't want to abuse your generosity, but you're great. I mean you're handling my nonlinear questions beautifully and your answers are quite good-

Russell: You think like I think so it's good.

Jay: Well, I'm a poster boy for adult attention deficit and I admire your brain and I admire your values and I admire what you've created. I get the biggest kick out of trying to do deals with you and see how charmingly you deflect. I mean that with positivity. I get the biggest kick out of you and I've enjoyed you a lot. I find you very impressive; monumentally impressive. I'm going to use a word that most people aren't going to know here, and I don't know how it's going to be translated. What "rocks your boat" today? Not just ambition and not just goal, but objectives and I'm differentiating objective from goal. Goal might be, we want to be 400 million, but in order to do that, there are objectives that are interesting. Like we want to offer three more services.

We want to own 150 different books freely and self liquidating. I mean, so what "rocks your boat?" Everybody "rocks your boat" means "turns you on" and "turns you on" means get you conceptually creatively, commercially possibility-wise, contribution-wise, excited. It can be about ClickFunnels. It can be about any of your other products. It can be about Nobility. But I know you've got the human trafficking also, which is admirable and if you want to talk about it, you can. But in the meantime, what "rocks your boat" in terms of objectives, not just goals?

Russell: Ooh, you got me excited. There's like 10 things I could talk about.

Jay: Talk about them. I mean, if you'll generously contribute, you're changing people's lives by causing them to think deeply about things they've never been introduced to. You can talk about anything you want and everything you want.

Russell: Okay. I'll share, I think like two or three really quick. One of them is related to ClickFunnels directly. We spent the last year and a half rebuilding our platform and we're about two or three months away from launching the new version of ClickFunnels. The reason why is ... I'm sure you've read, but there's a book called Crossing the Chasm and it talks about the different phases of business. Where I feel like the first two or years of ClickFunnels was us getting the early adopters and then next was the innovators. Now we're at this chasm where we're trying to take ClickFunnels to the world. Most worlds, can't fathom what a funnel is. It's beyond them. We've tried to redesign the software and then training. Everything in this way where we can cross that chasm and eventually go from 200 million to a billion or beyond by just changing the language and the process and simplifying it so much so that anybody like my mom could log into ClickFunnels and be like, "Oh." She knows exactly what to do.

Right. That's something we spent the last year and a half of our lives, deep into that. We're about to show it to the world, which is always a scary thing. But that's something I'm really excited for. Another big piece ... Actually, Tony Robbins asked me this question. He said, "If you were to sell ClickFunnels or be done, what would you do next?" A year and a half ago, I'm like, "I don't know. This is all I know." He said, "You got to find something else that you're passionate about that if, or when this ends, you got something else that keeps you motivated." I did not what that was for a long time. Then man, probably six or seven months ago, I started collecting old books and I don't dabble.

I go deep on anything I do. I started buying old books. I bought a lot of old religious books that meant a lot to me. But then I was like, I need somewhere to house these books. So we started designing and building this big 20,000-square-foot library with statues of Atlas and a bunch of cool things. I was going to have those books in there, but I said, "Well. I want all the old books from all the things I'm passionate about." I was like, "I want a personal development section." I'm like, "Well, who's got the best personal development books in the world?" One of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill and so I went and I found a whole bunch of first edition Napoleon Hill books like The Laws of Success three years before it was ever published.

I ended up spending multiple millions of dollars buying this entire state of Napoleon Hill with all the first editions that is now in my office. Then I started going down all these rabbit holes and I bought all these old first-issue books. I'm building this amazing library of learning and entrepreneurship where people can come and they can learn directly from these manuscripts that nobody has seen in hundreds and hundreds of years. That's something I'm just super passionate and excited for just because it's given me the ability to share these things from that I feel most people have forgotten about him. Right.

One of the big reasons why I bought Dan Kennedy's company is he almost passed away is as you know, and I was so afraid that all the stuff he had created was just going to disappear into the night. I was like, "Man. This stuff changed my life. I want to keep it. I want to keep it out there." This whole passion mission right now, I'm taking the best personal development and marketing and sales stuff from our generations and trying to put it in a platform where it will live on forever. That's a big, passionate thing that I'm working on right now as well. Those are some of the fun things.

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