Hey, everybody, good morning good morning. I hope you guys are all doing awesome today. Welcome everybody ... I hope you guys can hear me, I'm in my garage with kind of crappy Internet access. Hopefully you guys can see me.

What's up, hybrid marketers? How's everybody doing? I'm here today inside my gym, how many of you guys want to see it?

Hey, Michael Chaney, what's up bud? I'm coming out to your neck of the woods in two weeks. We should hang out. We'll be in the UK.

How's it going everybody. We got a "hi" from The Netherlands. We've got, [inaudible 00:00:36] the house in Sun Valley. Oh man. What's up? What's up, everybody?

Hey Jesse, how's it going? Good morning everyone.

Well ... Tim Springer's here. What's up what's up what's up?

All right, guys, so I'm running kind of slow today because my dad is actually getting today into the Utah Wrestling Hall of Fame. I'm flying out in about an hour to go down there because I'm going to be presenting him, which is kind of cool. I'm excited. Isn't that awesome? You guys like that, give my dad a double tap, it's going to be awesome.

I slept in a little bit this morning. Well not really; I stayed up late, and then this morning I was like, "I'm not going to go into the office." I'm going to just work out, and then heading into the airport.

I'm here in the gym working out. Most of you guys have seen this, right? ... If not, who wants to see it real quick? ... I think most of you have seen it, but if not here it is. Here is all the barbells. Just in case I want to life a barbell. There is my jump box, which is a nightmare; thrashes your legs. Then this is the [rogue 00:01:38] bar, this thing is awesome for doing pretty much everything. Over here is my platform where I can do cleans and stuff, I can do squats on the rack here. I've got my wrestling room, I've got my big old tire. Got my pull-down machines. Got some cardio.

No, I wasn't able to. It was actually cleans today, so I just finished doing cleans, and then I'm doing back and biceps today. I'm doing cleans, I was doing a bunch of pull-downs and rope climbs.

Here's a wrestling mat. This rope, Anthony [Clemettee 00:02:06] gave me for battle ropes. These ropes are hung from the ceiling for lifting and a bunch of other stuff, so it's pretty fun, right?

This is my sanctuary when I want to vent and get out and think and be away from the world. I love it.

Yeah, the whole gym's for myself and any of my friends who come over to hang out. Any of you guys from Boise want to work out, let me know. You guys are definitely invited to smack a tire and get thrown around. That's kind of it.

Anyway, my message for you guys today, because thinking about this a lot of times you and I get into business, and one of the most important things we can do is building our own platform.

Oh yes, someone asked if I ever keep the doors open. Yeah, I usually open the doors. Right now it's winter time. It's cold. That's why I've got sweatpants on, because it's chilly out here. We've got a big old heater up here in the corner but they've got to get it fixed, or they've got to connect it because the old home owners didn't have it connected. Hopefully by this time next week that'll be live, I can crank some heat in here, and then I'll be sweating. It's funny, because when I workout hard I'm not even sweating because it freezes on my face to fast.

All right, the big key as you guys all know is you need to build your own platform. That's why we do Periscopes, we'll be on Facebook, that's why Twitter, that's why email. All this stuff we do is because we need our own platform. It's our own distribution channel.

I was watching Shark Tank last night. How many of you guys still love the show Shark Tank? If you do give me a double tap as fast as you can ... Shark Tank is still amazing. What's interesting is if you watch each of those guys, they pick deals based on what distribution channel they are good at. Damon John, for example. If it's clothing or retail he's like "boom I'm in," because I know the distribution channel, I can just plug it in instantly.

You got Cuban, who knows online marketing, social media. If the business makes sense he's like, "I know how to plug that in immediately into one of my distribution channels" and boom, it just makes money.

All those those guys, the key what they have is distribution. That's it. Lori Grenier, she's got QVC distribution. They all have distribution. That's the secret you guys, that is the big secret. Distribution is what? It's your platform, it's your email list, it's your Facebook following, it's your Twitter following, it's your Periscope, you're Blab, whatever you want to do, I don't really care, your blog. You just need to start building a following, you need you start building your platform. That's key no matter what business you want to be in. I'm sure you guys all agree, that's why the hearts are flying right now.

The platform is key. That's the first thing.

I'm going to come over here so you can see the wrestling mat. Maybe I'll get a little better Internet access over here.

That's the key, is building that up. Now what's interesting is that as you start building your platform, initially I thought when I build a platform I'm just going to get people - Yes, Jesse said Facebook pages as well - who wanted to buy that one thing. You start building a platform, people who subscribe to your platform, to you, it's you that they're subscribing to.

It's not that I can only sell my platform Internet marketing stuff. I do, because that's the core message I'm sharing, how to share your message and how to get it out to more people in the world. I can do that, but what cool is that you start building a platform, people will connect with you as the platform owner, and the guru, as the thought leader, as whatever you want call it.

What's cool is you can start shaping who they are and what they believe and what's interesting to them, because if it's interesting to you and you're excited about it, it's not hard to get other people excited as well. Back when I launched my supplement company I started sharing it with my platform. "Hey, I'm launching a supplement company." Suddenly everyone in the world wanted to start launching supplement companies. We had a ton of our students and clients and friends all start launching supplement companies.

Then I started talking about my favorite supplements and what I do, and low and behold tons of people are now buying my favorite supplement. I get requests daily. "Russell, send me your top ten supplements. I'm going to go Amazon right now and buy them." I can sell supplements, I can do personal development. Whatever I'm passionate about I can sell through my platform.

Actually, I think one of the biggest hidden benefits of building your platform is that the things that you think are exciting and interesting, other people will be engaged with as well. I remember the very first Tony Robbins event I went to, he's up on stage and he's talking about some crazy things. At first I was just like "No. No, I'm not going to believe it. Nope. This guy is nuts. He may be a giant but no. There's no way." And then about five or six hours into it I starting thinking, "What if? What if what he's talking about is true?" Instead of being skeptical by default I'm going to take my skepticism and just hang it up on the shelf and just say what if, what if? Instead of saying no I'm going to say what if.

I started saying "what if," and as I started doing that it was interesting. The things he said, instead of me just automatically shutting down as no I'd say "well what if that's true?" I started thinking and I started listening to what he was saying. The things he was passionate about, I started to become passionate about. It was really weird.

That was probably six or seven years ago. Back then if you looked at me, I wasn't in good health, I didn't want to work out. I still wanted to wrestle, but no one would wrestle me. But I wasn't excited about health, I wasn't excited about fitness, I wasn't excited about personal development. There were all these things that I didn't care about, but I connected with Tony and his platform and what he was saying in his message. As I started I listening to it more and more and more, the more things he got excited about the more I got excited about.

The other day I was listening to an interview with him and Tim [Ferris 00:07:38]. He was talking about his cryo unit. I didn't even know what that was. I was going crazy, I was researching it, and now I'm trying to figure out how to buy a cryo unit to get here in the gym so every morning I can jump in -300 degree cold air. Which a year ago if you'd told me I'd want a cryo unit I'd have thought you were crazy. That is one of the hidden benefits of building your own platform.

As long as you're passionate, excited by it, you don't just have to help them with one aspect. Help them to all the stuff you care about. All the stuff that's had transformations for you, you can share those things and people will be inspired and excited. It just opens up your world, but the first key is you got to build your platform. If you don't have one yet it's time to do it.

Al wants to see me smash out a workout. Not right now. I don't have a selfie stick or else I would, but I've been going hard for the last 45 minutes or so.

Anyway guys, that's what I got for today. I've got to go finish. I did my cleans earlier, did my back, and now I'm going to go thrash my biceps so that they'll be a little bigger because they're not very big right now. That's the game plan.

Anyway guys, recommend that if you're thinking about building your following and your platform now is the time, because if you wait you're going to miss out on something great. I remember somebody told me nine or ten years ago "hey Russell, you should start a podcast." I was like, "okay, cool," and I never did.

Now nine or ten years later I finally launched one, and it's growing but it's a lot slower. I met one of our coaching clients the other day. He came in and he was like "nine years ago I started this podcast." I was like, "I wish I would have started one." I was asking him about what he does, he said "well I do a podcast three times a week and that's all I do." I go "Okay, well how do you make money?" He was like, "on the podcast I tell people about products and they go and they buy them." I looked at his sales [funnel 00:09:24], there's no sales funnel, there's a picture of the product and they have a [car 00:09:27] button. I'm like "what else to you use?" "Well I do podcast and I fill live events. I get thousands of people come to live events." I go like "how do you sell the events?" "I just talk about it on my podcast." I'm like "okay."

He shows me a page and there's a page that says "come to the live event" and there's an order button. That's it. No copy no funnel, nothing. He's coming to me saying "I want to build funnels." I'm like "okay." I'm listening to this guy, all he's got is he's been doing consistently, he's got one platform he's been building consistently for nine years. In my mind I'm like "this guy's got to be broke." There's no way to make any money. He has no sell pages, no order, no sales literature, no copy, nothing. All he's got is a podcast.

I asked him, I said, "I just got to ask. How much money do you make? I just need to know so I can judge where to steer you in what direction." He said "Well this year we'll do $2.3 million." I was like you do $2.3 million and you don't even have a sales funnel, you don't have a sales page, you just have a platform that you've been focusing on for nine years?

It made me wish that nine years ago when I heard about podcasts the first time I would have focused on it. I didn't. For you this is the time. Pick your platform. It could be Facebook, could be podcast, could be Periscope, could be your email list. I don't care what it is.

Actually I do care. One of your distribution channels has to be your email list. Your email list plus pick one other one. That's it. If you don't do that you're going to miss out.

All right guys. I got to go finish my workout before my body cools down anymore. Appreciate you all. Have an amazing day, and if you had good time give me a double tap, and I'll talk to you guys all again soon. Bye everybody.