If you want to see the impact that ‘plata o plomo’ had on one of our funnel hackers, listen to this episode. On this episode Russell talks about setting lead or gold, or plata o plomo deadlines in order to be able to achieve your ultimate goals. Here are some of the awesome things you can look forward to hearing on today’s episode:

-- Get an update on one of Russell’s friends that was previously discussed on the podcast.

-- Find out how Russell’s friend was able to give himself a plata o plomo situation in order to find some success.

-- And hear why Russell still sets lead or gold deadlines for himself, and why they could work for you in your business as well.

So listen here to find out what plata o plomo means, and why it’s so effective in helping people achieve their goals.

That’s why you probably hear me on the podcast sometimes, “Well, it’s 3 in the morning, but we had to be here because tomorrow the funnel is going live.” And you’re probably thinking, why in the world is Russell doing that? He’s made enough money, he doesn’t need to launch this next funnel. Why doesn’t he push it out a week or two and get it done the right way? And the reason is because I know what causes success, it’s that mindset of plata o plomo. It’s the mindset of this has to happen.

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What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast.

Hey everyone, it’s Friday, it’s the last day of school. I just watched my 5th grader graduate from 5th grade, which is exciting. Tonight we are driving to Utah for a couple of reasons, number one, I’m going to go see my Mom and Dad, which is always amazing. Number two, my kids get to go see my brother and his kids, which is really exciting, they’re pumped for that. And number three is we’re going to Tim Ballard’s and we’re going to be filming a part for the OUR documentary, kind of a call to action at the end where people can donate to raise money for Operation Underground Railroad. Then number four, there’s a big thing, entrepreneur of the year award thing, that I’m in the finals for, and I’m going down for that.

Apparently it’s a black tie event, and I don’t have black tie stuff, so yesterday I raced to Men’s Warehouse and bought a nice suit and nice tie, and now they’re getting them all custom fitted, and I’m hoping and praying they get them done before I drive past the building on the way out of town because otherwise I will be dressed up in flip flops and shorts at a black tie event. Anyway, wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll have a shot at winning the entrepreneur of the year, which would be kind of fun. And that’s kind of what’s happening.

This week we had our Two Comma Club X event, it was here in Boise. It was really cool, we had about 250-300 people who were here. And I didn’t go to the event because I’m trying to, those system events it’s run by James P. Friel, Steven Larsen, Julie Stoian, John Parkes, and then Brent Coppieters kind of running it. So I don’t need to be at those ones, which has been nice. They’ve been doing them all so I can stay home and continue working on Mother Funnel, which is still not live.

Anyway, I digress. Afterwards, they wanted to come and do a tour of the office so they’re all bussing over to come do a tour of the office. And I was like, I want to speak. And they’re like, “No you need to go home. It’s going to be too much. They’re all going to want pictures with you.” And I’m like, “I know but I really want to talk to these guys.”

So we jammed 200 people into our conference room that holds like 60 people, they were sitting on the floor, and standing room only. I came in and had a chance to do a presentation for them, which was really, really fun. I love that stuff. The energy in the room was palpable, you could feel it, you could taste it, it was so cool and I shared with them some stuff.

But the one thing I wanted to talk to you guys about, those who were in the Two Comma Club X program, you remember that I gave a presentation at Funnel Hacking Live called “Plata O Plomo” Which stands for Lead or Gold, or Silver or the Bullet, depending how direct a translation you want to get. And the whole thing was basically like, we want you guys to get in the Two Comma Club, but if you want to come in you have to set your lead or gold thing.

And the story behind lead or gold, I heard this originally from Gary Halpert, he talked about the Mexican Mafia or whatever, if they want to get a law passed, or a law changed, they go the politicians like, “You need to change the law.” And they’re like, “No, that’s insane.” So he said that night these same mobsters, they’d break into the homes of the politicians and come up to them and have a gun in one hand and have a bag of gold in the other hand, or silver, and say, “You need to make the law change, and you’ve got two options. Number one is lead, I’m going to kill you if you don’t. Number two is gold or silver, and you get a payment if you do.”

And that was kind of the metaphor, when that’s your two options, either lead or gold, you pretty much figure out a way to make it happen right, when those are your only options. So the whole thing of this is like, if you want to be in Two Comma Club you can’t stop, you gotta stop thinking about it and dreaming about it, you need to make it a thing. Make it a lead or gold, plata o plomo thing.

And so this is why we have this coaching program, we call it Two Comma Club X and it’s to get a Two Comma Club award, and then Two Comma Club X which is the 8 figure award, and it’s going to be plata o plomo. We’re going to push you guys along and it needs to be life or death. If you can trick your mind into being that, you’ll actually have success.

And from that we had 3000 or so people in the room, 600 or so signed up for the program and that’s the people that are in this program that we’ve been serving. And it’s just been really, really fun. We’re sending them all these cool plata o plomo things. They all got t-shirts that say plata o plomo now, and it’s like the chant, the mission statement for them. Lead or gold, we gotta make this happen. We’re moving forward, we’re doing it.

And it’s not a cheap program, it’s either $18,000 a year or $1,800 a month. So it’s expensive. And I told them, “The reason why it’s expensive is I want this pushing you and getting you to take steps.” Because if it’s like, oh it’s a $97 a month continuity program, you’re not going to take this serious. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I gotta make this work.”

Anyway, so I did this presentation with them, and I talked about a bunch of things, but that was a big one. It’s like, “Look you guys, Funnel Hacking Live was two months ago. Where are you at now? Have you been setting your own deadlines? Set a deadline, make it a plata o plomo deadline. I have to get this piece of the puzzle done. Don’t go to bed until it’s done. Then pick the next date. Set these dates to pull you through.”

Anyway, it was really cool. And then the coolest part, is this morning. One of my friends, and if you’ve been listening to this podcast forever you heard, I did a podcast with one of my friends from elementary and junior high school who was struggling. And I reached out to him on Facebook and anyway, I tell this story in a different podcast, I’m not going to go deep into it, but I basically told him, “If you go and listen to a bunch of my podcasts, I’ll tell you what it is I think you need to do to help you.”

And he agreed to do that, he went and listened to, I don’t know, 20 or 30 podcasts, so I recorded an hour long podcast for him specifically. So if you go back in the archives, you can find it. It’s an hour long, and I talk about 3 types of people in the business. Go and find it. There’s my trick to get you to go binge listen to every episode from the last year. But it was about a year ago, so hopefully you can go and find it.

Anyway, long story short. Funnel Hacking Live, I was still communicating with this friend and he wasn’t able to come because it was expensive and he wasn’t making enough money yet. I said look, “I’ll give you a free ticket if you can figure out a way to get out there.” What’s fun is this morning, I don’t want to ruin the story, but he joined the Two Comma Club x program and he came this morning to my house so we could hang out for like an hour and we could talk. And he was telling me the story from his point of view.

He was like, “Look, I didn’t have money to come to the event, so I put it on credit cards. And I was like, hopefully I can figure out a way to make at least $3 grand back in credit cards. I came out there and then you guys made the presentation for the Two Comma Club x, the plata o plomo. I was sick to my stomach. It was so much fun to watch the presentation and see the master doing his thing. But then that night I went back to my hotel room and  I was sick to my stomach because I knew I needed to be in it, but I didn’t have the money.

“You don’t understand, my rent is $700 a month, the last two years prior I was making $25 thousand a year. We were in poverty. And you made this presentation and it was $1,800 a month and I sat in my room crying because I knew that I needed to be part of it, but I knew I couldn’t. I called my wife and we talked about it and we just said, we’re not in a point of our life when we can and maybe in the future we’ll figure out a way to do it.”

And he said he went to bed that night and struggled and couldn’t sleep very well and the next morning he woke up and went down to the event early and was standing around and he went and was talking to Kevin Annison, who is one of our video dudes. The guy who does all the Funnel Hacker TV stuff, and he said after talking to Kevin, he said, “I need to join.” And he said, “I walked over to the thing, I gave them my credit card and signed up for this program that’s $1800 a month that I couldn’t afford but I knew I needed to do. As soon as I felt it, I had chills, I knew it was the right decision.”

And I didn’t know this at the time, had I known I would have been like, “No, dude.” I probably would have talked him out of it. But he said he was so scared he didn’t even tell his wife right away. He went home for a week before he told his wife and then he finally told her. And she was like, “We don’t have $1800 a month. We can’t do this.” And he’s like, “I know. Now I have a plata o plomo. I have to figure this out. I gotta do it.” And he started just telling me what he did afterwards.

He went and created an offer. He’s like, “I saw how Russell created an offer, so I created an offer for my video work and I went and presented it to somebody and they were excited but they couldn’t afford it, so they said no and I was kind of bummed out. Then I met someone else, we were working on a project, and then they wanted to do more stuff with me, so they asked me for a quote, and I told them $25,000. I made them an offer with a stack like you did, and they said yes. That one deal I more than paid for the coaching program.”

And then since then he’s closed another deal of $11,000 I believe he said, and he’s got other ones coming in the pipeline. And for him it was that plata o plomo. Where it was like, for a year prior we’ve been talking about this, he listened to the podcast, he’d been kind of moving things forward, but it wasn’t until he had that lead or gold thing, where it’s like, look you’ve got two options. Either make this work or you’re done. And when he had to he was able to figure out a way.

So I just wanted to share that with you because man, when he was telling me that story this morning, as someone who’s a friend, who I’ve known since I was 5 years old, it was cool. And I would be kidding you if I didn’t tell you I was scared to death when I found out he had signed up. I’m like, dude, I know you don’t have the money for this. You shouldn’t be buying this.

But for him, it was like, “I needed that lead or gold to push me, to make sure that I did it. Now I’ve got this network of humans and entrepreneurs I connect with at a different level than normal people. And all these amazing things are coming from it.”

Anyway, so plata o plomo, I just wanted to share with you guys because I know a lot of you guys have been playing this game for a long time, you’ve been listening, you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, paying attention and enjoying it, but I think for a lot of you guys you’re not going to have the success you want until you make that plata o plomo decision.

And it doesn’t have to mean giving me $1800 a month. That’s cool, if you want to do that. I’m totally up for it. But it means like, setting your deadlines. This has to happen and forcing your mind to believe it. I’m in a weird state now where CLickfunnels is growing insanely fast, and you know all this amazing stuff is happening and I don’t need more money. We don’t need to launch the next funnel or whatever, but I still trick my mind, this is the launch date. It has to happen. Plata o plomo. I get my whole team convinced and we set these dates and we don’t miss them.

That’s why you probably hear me on the podcast sometimes, “Well, it’s 3 in the morning, but we had to be here because tomorrow the funnel is going live.” And you’re probably thinking, why in the world is Russell doing that? He’s made enough money, he doesn’t need to launch this next funnel. Why doesn’t he push it out a week or two and get it done the right way? And the reason is because I know what causes success, it’s that mindset of plata o plomo. It’s the mindset of this has to happen.

I would argue that the reason why I’ve been successful is because of that. I’ve tricked my mind into that, I’ve continued to. The reason why I continue to keep pushing the envelope, the reason why we’re continuing to grow. I’ve been in this game for 15 years now, I have seen friends and businesses come and go, businesses who I thought were so big they would never topple. They’re gone now, you guys wouldn’t even recognize the names if I mentioned them.

And what’s the difference? I think the other ones’ people become complacent. If we’re like I don’t want to become complacent. I want to grow and to serve. I can’t have the impact on the world I want to have if I stop or if I shrink. I gotta keep on growing. So it’s like setting these deadlines, keeping things going forward. The plata o plomo for me, doesn’t just mean money. It means the impact I want to have.

So I just encourage you guys to start looking at that mindset and shifting it and realizing that if someone broke into your house tonight and said, “Look, this funnel has got to go live by Friday or else you’re dead. Or if it does go live, you get this gold.” Which one are you going to do? What would you do? And how would you trick your mind to be able to figure out the right way to do it? If you do that you’re going to figure out the right answer.

So there you go, I hope that helps you guys. I’m going to go in and get some stuff done because we got a webinar next week and my plata o plomo moment, I literally have two hours and fifteen minutes before it has to be done, because at that point I’m jumping in the car and driving to Utah, so plata o plomo. That’s what’s happening right now in my world. Pick your date, make a plata o plomo moment, and run after it. With that said, appreciate you guys, have an amazing day and we’ll talk to you guys soon.