We’ve shut it all down! It’s 2 weeks before Funnel Hacking LIVE and that means I’m preparing presentations for 2 weeks straight and nothing else. Other teams work on what they need to, but my focus is to finish 11 new presentations for this Funnel Hacking LIVE and a lot of the inspiration for this year’s focus is coming from a book called “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. My first introductory presentation is the one I’m most proud of because it sets the tone for the event and the attendees beliefs and who they’re trying to become. This is how I’m fighting resistance to prepare for the greatest Funnel Hacking LIVE ever! Grab your ticket at https://www.funnelhackinglive.com/

So anyway, long story short, the resistance is real. I'm feeling it right now. I'm sure you're feeling it. If you're not feeling it, that's good start... If you're not feeling it, start running. And then as you are pursuing something worthwhile, it'll sneak up, it'll show up, it'll be there mocking you and teasing you and holding you back, and doing everything in its power to keep you from achieving what you're trying to achieve. But success comes in, I think, the recognition of it like, "Oh, there's resistance. I can feel it. I'm going to blast through this."

Hey, good morning everybody. This is Russell. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm going old school, I'm in the car right now, so we should call us the Marketing In Your Car Podcast. Folks who don't know, that's the first three or 400 episodes was the Marketing In Your Car Podcast before we transition to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. But I'm heading into the office. Dropped off Aiden at school. And I am a week and a half, oh, it makes me sick to even say that out loud, a week and a half away from Funnel Hacking Live, as I'm recording this.

And for me, my life's always chaotic. I'm doing a lot. There's always lots stuff happening. It's funny, I feel like I do more in a day than most people do in a month. And it's fun, I love it. I love just the stuff and the activities and the projects and the adventures and all this stuff. And then time with my wife, with my kids. And anyway, so it's fun. But I always know that two weeks prior to FHL, everything shuts down, other than family time. But every other business, everyone knows Russell's no longer available, he's not doing meetings, he's not doing anything else. Because I spend two weeks just getting all my presentations and my slides done. It takes about that long for Funnel Hacking Live.

So Monday I started, day number one. And it was fun, because I was thinking and writing and figuring things out and mapping them out and everything, and no slides got done, but I'm like, "It's okay, I'm thinking." And I actually really enjoyed that. I had fun just thinking for a whole day. And yes, I was like, "Okay, today I'm going to start on my slide." Then I spent most of the day trying to do that. And then this thing hit me, and you may have heard of this before. In fact, I'm going to talk about it in Funnel Hacking Live this year. I'm excited. The thing that hit me is called the resistance. Okay? Have you heard of this before? I was reading Steve Pressfield's book called The War of Art, not The Art of War. There's two books, similar titles. This is the War of Art. It talks about all creatives.

And if you're an entrepreneur or an author, an artist, whatever, or creating whatever, that every time you start to try to do your thing, resistance hits you. And resistance is that thing when you are in bed in the morning, you wake up and you don't want to get out of bed. It's the, "I don't want to work out. I don't want to write." You're sitting down to go actually write something or work on your slides or do your presentation or go to the gym or whatever it is, and the resistance. It's something like, obviously I've always felt it, but I never had a word for it. And I read that book and the whole thing's about the resistance, how to overcome the resistance. And it just became a tangible phrase for me. I'm like, "Oh, I love that, the resistance." And so right now I'm in the middle of the resistance. On day number three today, and I still have not done a single slide.

That's not true. I have a guy named Leon on my team who does all of our slide design. So I think I have 11 different presentations. He's been designing them all. Yesterday I was able to get the title slide for each one, so I know the title for each one at least, which helps direct the ship, knowing where I'm going. And then I outlined out most of them. So I have that in place. Other than my number one presentation, my intro, it's the one I spend the most time on when I'm most proud of, the most nervous for all those kind of things. That one, I don't have an outline. Well, I kind of have an outline, but it's the one that I've thought about the most, but it's the one I've taught the least. It's not just a marketing thing. Most of the marketing ones are easy for me, because I'm like, "Oh, I've thought about this a million times. I've talked about it a million times." I know the things that are interesting and intriguing and exciting, and those ones are easy.

But the first one is my one where it's like I am setting the tone for the event and for their belief and for who they are and who they're trying to become. And that's the one that I'm most nervous and excited for. Anyway, I just wanted to jump on here because I'm driving to the office and I'm about to get to work, and I can feel the resistance. I can feel it like, "Go back to bed. You're tired, you're not, da, da, da." Whatever it might be. In fact, yesterday, let me tell you how bad the resistance got to me. I was preparing, I was studying, which is fun, and then I was like, "Well, I'm going to listen to a book that talks about things."

So I put it on 4x speed, started listening to it. And luckily the guy who's the author of the book, he is really a slow speaker. So 3x speed is like listening to me on 1x. So I'm listening to it. And then I was sitting there for a while, just sitting there listening to it in one of my offices, and I'm like, "I'm going to go walk around." So I got outside. I started walking. And I was like, "This is fun." I'm walking and walking. So I was walking and stuff. And I was walking, listening to this. I was like, "You know what? My main office, my desk is a mess, and I feel crammed in there. I haven't rearranged my office forever. And it's like I feel like I can't get anything done." And so then I was like, "I'm going to..." Well, I'm listening, so going to go rearrange my office. And so, have you read that book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? That's what it started like.

So I'm in the office, and first I was just cleaning stuff off my desk to make it more room. And then I was like, "Oh, there's stuff underneath my desks and it's the wrong, it takes my legroom and it's hard to focus, because it's so tight in there. And if I was to pull my desk out and move it, I could do this and this." And then next thing, I have my whole team's in there helping move the desk out. And then I'm packing up boxes. And then I'm ripping stuff out my drawers and throwing everything away. And I'm two hours into reorganizing and cleaning my office. And take it, I was listening to my audiobook at the time, which was my study for the presentations. So there's that piece of it. I was progressively moving forward, but I definitely 100% was like the resistance was hitting me from every direction.

Like, "Oh, Russell, you should go on a walk." I never want to walks. Like, "That seems like more fun right now than working." "Okay, I'm going to go on a walk." "Hey Russell, you should rearrange your office." I hate rearranging your office. I hate decorating. I hate design. I hate throwing stuff away. I hate all those things. But despite the fact that I hate those things more than... If you've never been around me, I'm a typical creative. You go my office and it's a nightmare. It's a wreck. It's like a hurricane all the time. I know where everything's at. I've got a big office, so there's just a lot of stuff. It's just overwhelming. And I hate cleaning up. I hate organizing all kind stuff. Yet to fight myself from actually doing the presentations, my brain is looking for every possible outlet. And so, it was more willing and more okay with rearranging and cleaning my office than sit down and actually create a slide. That's the resistance. That's the thing that we come up against.

And so, I just wanted to share that with you because right now, as I'm moving towards an imminent deadline, which I'm excited for, but also there's nerves, anxiety, and all the things, my brain's doing everything in its power to slow me down, to keep me from doing stuff. And I'm sure a lot of you guys feel like this, right? The resistance hits you. You know for yourself, you've probably got your goal, right? Like, "Okay, I need to launch my email newsletter. I need to do step number two." Whatever the thing is you got to do. Yeah, "I got to do Facebook Lives every day or Instagram lives," or "I got to go post everything on social," or "I'm going to go do my podcast every day," or whatever your thing is. You have those things in place and the resistance slips in there and it's just like, "No, don't do it. Do this instead. It's going to be hard. You're going to be tired."

One of the quotes he had in the book was, he said, "Any author knows that sitting down and writing your book is not the hard part. It's the sitting down that's the hard part." Just doing the work, being willing to start, that's the hardest part. And so, anyway, it's a really good book. It's like a two-hour audiobook, it's a short read. You can get the whole thing done really quickly. The guy who wrote it, he's the same guy who wrote the book Bagger Vance, which became a movie that Will Smith played in. And that's, I think, of all the art he created, the one that's the most famous and most well-known. He's written tons of books. In fact, I recently went and bought every one of his books. He's got a whole bunch of books on writing that are amazing. He's got some books on, his more story-based books that he's written, which are rich.

I've seen the movie Bagger Vance, I haven't actually read it. So I bought all those as well. And then he wrote a bunch of books just on his beliefs and stuff, which is exciting. Especially since I had just got back from Jerusalem. So he's a Jew. And so, one of his books was about being Jewish. And I'm actually really excited to read it. Now that I got back from Jerusalem, and I have a newfound, deep love and appreciation for my Jewish friends and brothers. Anyway, I'm fascinated by everything related to that. Anyway, if you have minute, sorry, this is like a tangent. This is the resistance trying to get me to not go in the office and get my project started today. So the resistance is having me podcast instead of all the things. Anyway, when you go to Jerusalem, it's so fascinating if you really go deep into the culture and try to understand it. You see the Christian culture, you see the Muslim culture, and you see the Jewish culture, all in this one area. Man, it's just beautiful, so cool, so exciting.

Anyway, so I have this newfound interest and love and appreciation for all religions, but specifically those two, really understanding the Muslims and what they believe and where they came from and how they fit into the whole grand scheme of things. And then also the Jewish people and how they fit into things. And from the Mormon side, we're obviously Christian and we have our beliefs and we have, if you go back in time, the Old Testament, the 12 tribes, we understand where we fit in there. And you see from that like, "Oh, this is Judah, this is where the Jews came from. And this is where after Abraham and Isaac and then the 12 sons," you kind of see where it fits in history and chronology. And then for me, it's like, "Now where did the Muslims come from based on this?" And going back in time and figuring out, "Oh, they came from this branch and from Ishmael versus..." Anyway, it was fascinating. So that's maybe a podcast for... Maybe it's a different podcast. It's probably not a Marketing Secrets podcast. But I want to dive a lot deeper and understand that.

So anyway, things I'm passionate about, things I'm enjoying. Hopefully you guys find the stuff that you're passionate about, that you're obsessed with, and really enjoy learning and studying and figuring those things out. It gives meaning to life, it gives excitement, it gives color to life when you start connecting the dots and understanding how all this stuff fits together. So anyway, long story short, the resistance is real. I'm feeling it right now. I'm sure you're feeling it. If you're not feeling it, that's good start... If you're not feeling it, start running. And then as you are pursuing something worthwhile, it'll sneak up, it'll show up, it'll be there mocking you and teasing you and holding you back, and doing everything in its power to keep you from achieving what you're trying to achieve. But success comes in, I think, the recognition of it like, "Oh, there's resistance. I can feel it. I'm going to blast through this."

But before I had a phrase or name for it was just like, "Oh, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this." Now it's like, "Oh, the resistance is coming. Here it is. Okay, I can win. I can beat it." So giving it a tangible name and a concept and a thing for me, has made it easier in my head to attack and to beat. So hopefully I can give that tool to you guys as well. The resistance is there. It's fighting you. It's keeping you from your art, from your thing you've been called to do. But understand it is what it is. You can break through it. And there you go. War of Art, Steven Pressfield. All right, with that said, the resistance is not going to win. I'm going in to go and create.

Hopefully you'll be at Funnel Hacking Live, so you can see what the creations were. By the time this goes live, I think this goes live on Friday, and I think that ticket sales close on Sunday. So if you're hearing this, this is probably your last shot to get tickets. So funnelhackinglive.com, go get your tickets. We're less than two weeks away. But have you just be about a week away, which is crazy. So, all right, appreciate you guys. Oh, I can't wait to serve you at Funnel Hacking Live this year. And I'll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.