If you master this, your army will be amazing. On today’s episode Russell talks about a friend of his that passed away over the weekend and the legacy that he leaves behind. Here are some of the inspiring things in this episode:

-- How the death of a friend inspired Russell to think about his own legacy.

-- What it means to become a hero maker.

-- Why Russell hopes to leave the same kind of legacy behind that Mark Hoverson has left.

So listen here to find out why it’s important to lift others up and create an army of heroes.

“What I found, the best way to make money is, I’ve always got my eyes open looking for the stories of people who are using my product or service, or are doing that. I try to take those people and make them the hero. That’s the big secret, that’s the big thing we all have to understand. It’s not you talking about how great you are, or you bragging about how much money you made, or how much weight you lost, those things. It’s becoming a hero maker. Your job as the expert as the person who’s helping and serving, is not to increase your status and your stature, it’s to help other people, and then as you do, to turn those people into heroes.”

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Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast, I’ve got a really special episode for you guys today.

Alright everybody, I’m heading to the office a little later today, and it’s funny as I’m leaving the office, there’s this guy that works on our yard all the time, his name is Eric and he is awesome. And it’s so funny because every time I see him I’m like, “How you doing?” and he’s like, “I’m working. What are you doing?” He always teases me because he’s out there sweating like crazy and I’m like, “I gotta go to work so I can pay for you dude, you are expensive.” Him and his whole crew. So it’s kind of funny.

So today I saw him a second ago and he’s like, “Where are you going?” and I’m like, “I gotta go pay for you guys. I gotta make some money.” So it’s always funny how the more money you’re able to make, the more jobs you create. We got a whole team of people at our house right now doing stuff, working on stuff. So don’t forget that. The more you do, the more jobs you’re able to create.

Alright, onto the lesson for today. I have a friend, and it’s not someone I knew really well. Back in the day, in fact, back at the beginning of this podcast you may remember I talked about a company we were building called Rippln that we were able to get 1.5-1.6 million followers in six weeks, and the whole thing collapsed because….well, I won’t go into that, but it’s all gone, disappeared and that was really sad.

But one of the guys I met when I was there during the process, his name was Mark Hoverson and Mark was a really, really good dude. I really enjoyed him, I liked him. I had a couple of intimate moments with him where I had a chance to see him working with younger people who were coming up new in the industry and just saw how he treated them and helped them and supported them. I just always had a lot of respect for the guy.

I found out about a year ago, I didn’t know this at the time, but he had come down with a type of pancreatic cancer, the same type of cancer that Steve Jobs passed away from. I guess it’s super rare and people don’t live through it. And I think he was supposed to, I don’t remember the whole story, but he was supposed to be given four or five months to live and he ended up living for almost five years afterwards. And part of it was he thought, he said, “I’m not going to tell people I have cancer, I’m just going to live my life and live it to the fullest. Then I’m just going to go all out just like that.” And he did and lived an amazing four or five years longer. And this weekend he actually just passed away.

You know he’s a guy, if you go back and search his name, you can find cool stuff that he published, videos and he left behind a beautiful wife and amazing kids and it’s just a really sad thing. But what’s been fun is this weekend people have all been posting tributes to him and his life and his legacy and things that he did. One of my friends actually posted an entire video from a presentation he did at his event, so I was watching this morning, and it was just fun to see him in action back in his heyday and see him on stage.

A couple of things went through my head, one was how grateful I am that I have a chance to write books and to do videos and things like that, that will extend beyond my death. When I pass away people will still be able to see me on YouTube and through books and I think that’s a big part of it. For all you guys that want to figure out how to live forever, a big part of it is by publishing things that will live beyond you.

So that’s kind of one thought, but the second one is even cooler. He said a quote in his speech that was really cool. He said, “If you become a hero maker, your army will be amazing.” He said, “If you become a hero maker, your army will become amazing.” And when he said that I was thinking about it and I was thinking about business and how a lot of times we try to position ourselves as the hero, but the real magic comes when you become a hero maker and you make heroes out of the people that you’re serving, out of your customers and your clients and things like that.

And if you do that you’ll have an army of people who love you and support you because you’ve made them heroes. At the speech he was giving, I think JLD John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire was the next speaker up and he’s talking about John and he said, “You know this guy is interviewing a new person every single day and he’s putting them on his platform and making them a hero to other people. When you die someday, if you’ve been making other people heroes imagine how people will love you and come back to you and connect with you.”

And I thought that was super cool, especially in the context of this weekend. And the other cool thing that Mark then went on to say in his presentation, he said, “What I found, the best way to make money is, I’ve always got my eyes open looking for the stories of people who are using my product or service, or are doing that. I try to take those people and make them the hero. That’s the big secret, that’s the big thing we all have to understand. It’s not you talking about how great you are, or you bragging about how much money you made, or how much weight you lost, those things. It’s becoming a hero maker. Your job as the expert as the person who’s helping and serving, is not to increase your status and your stature, it’s to help other people, and then as you do, to turn those people into heroes.”

And when you do that, that’s how your company will grow, how your business will grow. Those are the best hooks, and the angles, and the offers, and the things that will come because you’re doing that. If you look at what we’ve done inside of Clickfunnels, I’ve tried to do that. And this was kind of a wake-up call for me to do it even better. As I try to look at our customers and our success stories and make them the heroes.

How many videos have we published telling the stories of our Two Comma Club winners, and my Inner Circle members, all these people that are having success, I make them the hero. And when you think about that, like he said in the quote there, you become the hero maker, your army will become amazing. I look now at what we’ve built with Clickfunnels, it’s been interesting to see that. This army of people who use us, who support us, I think a big part of it is because we made people heroes, we made our customers heroes. And we’ll continue to do that.

So for you, I just wanted to kind of bring that to you today. I thought it was a really profound thing that I heard this morning as I was getting ready. I just think it’s cool, become a hero maker. What a cool tagline, what a cool mission. “What do you do?” “I’m a hero maker. I help people with the things I’m good at and then when they have success I make them the hero. I bring them up and tell their story, I bring them on podcasts and on videos and sales letters and all those things. I tell their story. I make them heroes.” And when you do that, you’re following, your army of people will be amazing, they’ll be grateful, they’ll be loyal because you made them heroes.

So hopefully there’s some value in that for you guys today. I know for me it really hit home and just looking back on Mark Hoverson’s life and reflecting on the few times I had a chance to interact with him, and now looking at this outpouring of love as he passed on, and just looking at him, he’s someone who did that. He was a hero maker, he brought people up. It wasn’t just about him. When I saw him those times, those intimate moments kind of behind the scenes, I was watching him taking these young kids who were 20 something years old. And I think he was 39 years old when he passed away, so at the time he was probably 34-35 and he was taking these kids that are 10-15 years younger than him and taking them under his wing and helping them and nurturing them and trying to give them success so he can turn them into heroes. And I just think that’s something that’s really profound and it’s something that I hope that when I pass away someday that’s the legacy that I leave behind.

So yeah, I thought I’d share that with you guys. I hope that helps you all today in your journey. I appreciate you all, thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.