Understanding the “Pride Cycle” can keep your business protected from yourself.
On today’s episode Russell talks about the pride cycle and how he stays humble. Here a few of the amazing things in this episode:
-- Find out what the pride cycle is and why you have to go through it to learn how to stay humble.
-- Hear how Russell keeps himself humble so he doesn’t have to go through a third crash.
-- And find out why sometimes pride isn’t the reason for your crash, you just needed to go another direction.
So listen here to find out how to keep yourself humble in your business so you don’t have to be humbled.
So first is you are humble and you’re eager to learn and try to grow or whatever. And because you’re humble, you start having success. You start learning and growing and developing and you go in this circle. So those who are listening, you can’t see my finger, but those who are watching, I’m making a circle with my fingers. It started kind of going up, having success, start learning and more good things happen and all the sudden you get to the very top and boom, you’re having success. And what happens when we start having success, we start drinking our own kool-aid and becoming prideful and start thinking, “Man, I am amazing.” And what happens at the top of that, this is the backside of the pride cycle.
-- ClickFunnels: Everything you need to start market, sell, and deliver your products and services online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)
-- DotComSecrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Growing Your Company Online With Sales Funnels."
-- Expert Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Converting Your Online Visitors Into Lifelong Customers."
-- Traffic Secrets: Get a free copy of the "Underground Playbook For Filling Your Websites And Funnels With Your Dream Customers.
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson and welcome to a
late night Marketing Secrets podcast.
Hey everyone, I’m in my home tonight, right now. My wife and my
kids are asleep, I’m about to head to bed. I still got kind of a
stuffy nose. Monday my cold went away, then Todd and Ryan and Karen
and Nick and a bunch of people flew into town this week to do a big
hack-a-thon, working on some new updates in Clickfunnels,
Clickfunnels Actionetics MD, and a bunch of just insane, cool
things that we’ll be showing at Funnel Hacking Live, and we
basically pulled two all nighters in a row and low and behold my
cold came back.
So now we have official proof that sleep does correlate to if
you’re going to get sick or not. So yeah, you should sleep more
often. So tonight we actually went home early, it’s a little after
10, so I’m going to get some sleep tonight, which I’m excited
for.
But I wanted to share a quick message with you guys that I
thought was really cool. I was catching up with my Voxers with my
inner circle members and answering them and I had a really cool
conversation tonight through Voxer with one of my inner circle
members. He’s a Clickfunnels member, Two Comma Club winner, and an
inner circle member his name is Akbar Sheikh. A lot of you guys may
know him, he’s very prominent in our community. And it was a really
cool conversation.
I’m not going to share the whole thing, first off, just
confidentiality with my clients, second off, it doesn’t matter.
Kind of the end result of what we talked about ended up being
really cool and I thought I would spend a little bit sharing it
with all of you guys because I think it’s important.
So Akbar was talking to me, he basically was talking about
business owners and entrepreneurs have success and a lot of times
they stop being humble. There’s a concept called the pride cycle,
so those who went to seminary like I did, there’s a concept called
pride cycle and this is how the pride cycle works.
So first is you are humble and you’re eager to learn and try to
grow or whatever. And because you’re humble, you start having
success. You start learning and growing and developing and you go
in this circle. So those who are listening, you can’t see my
finger, but those who are watching, I’m making a circle with my
fingers. It started kind of going up, having success, start
learning and more good things happen and all the sudden you get to
the very top and boom, you’re having success. And what happens when
we start having success, we start drinking our own kool-aid and
becoming prideful and start thinking, “Man, I am amazing.” And what
happens at the top of that, this is the backside of the pride
cycle.
So then the Lord, or whoever it is, humbles you and basically
you become humble back at the very bottom, and you cycle, and then
hopefully you’re sufficiently humble where you can learn and grow
and start this process up again. You go up and then you get to the
top of the cycle, and then usually people at the top become
prideful and then they crash again. So this is the pride cycle.
This is happening around all day long. It’s been happening since
the beginning of time. You can see it with political leaders,
religious leaders, you can see it in people, humans, anyone in your
own life, you’ve seen it. I guarantee you’ve see it. If you step
back and look at your own life, you’ve seen the pride cycle. It’s a
true thing that’s happening.
So we were talking about that, I think people a lot of times ask
me, “Russell, how do you stay humble with things happening.”
Because I’m scared of the pride cycle. I’ve gone on the full loop
and the bottom is not very much fun, so I’m trying to figure out
how I stay up here. And the thing that I know is that when you’re
prideful, you have to crash. If you believe scripture, it says,
“The Lord will have a humble people, either you will be humble or
he will humble you.” So I’m like, okay I’m going to be humble,
because I don’t want to be humbled, that sounds horrible.
And it’s interesting, the next thing I kind of told Akbar was
about, I had a friend that was in Mexico on this marketing thing
and I was talking to this guy that became a friend later, and he’s
super wealthy. He buys and sells businesses, and makes a ton of
money. What’s interesting, we’re talking and he wanted to hear my
story so of course, as most entrepreneurs do I tell him the
highlight reel of how cool I am. And he’s like, “Oh, not
impressed.” I’m like huh.
And he asked me, “So have you always just had success?” And I
was like, I kind of told him, “Well, twice I’ve pretty much
bankrupt my companies.” And he’s like, “Well tell me that story,
that story sounds more interesting.” So I kind of tell him the
story and then he’s like, “Good, good.” And I’m like, “What do you
mean good? That’s not good.” And he’s like, “No, you’ve cycled. I
will never work with an entrepreneur who hasn’t cycled at least
once.” And I was like, “What do you mean cycled?” and he said, “You
built a company that crashed. If you haven’t cycled, you’re still
going to drink your own kool-aid, read your own bio and believe it.
It’s not going to be good.”
And I was like, oh how cool is that? First off, cycling sounds
way cooler than failing, but second off, I was just like, how
interesting, it’s the pride cycle. He only works with people who
have at least cycled once, because they’re sufficiently humbled
that they’ll listen to advice and they’re going to grow.
So Akbar and I were kind of talking about this, and then his
message back was like, “I’ve been down at the bottom, but I’ve
gotten to the spot where I’m kind of at the top. I don’t want that
to be part of my story. I don’t want the crashing part of my story,
what do I do?”
So I just wanted to share this piece of advice, because this is
kind of what I told him and I think that it’s important for all of
us to think about. So what I told him, first off, from a business,
basically I learned….because he asked, “Is it about
diversification? Is that the key?”and I was like, “Well, kind of.”
I believe in diversification in some things but not your business.
I think everyone should go…whatever your business is going to be,
you should go all in. You shouldn’t diversify your business. I
think having multiple businesses is the fastest way to destroy your
business.
And I know that from personal experience, from a decade of it.
So this is not me just philosophizing, this is me doing a lot of
businesses and none of them could grow. Having a sole focus, you’re
not diversifying your businesses, you’re diversifying the pieces
around your business. Where are the singular failure points? For
me, my first time, or my second big business crash was, I was
running on one merchant account and that was it.
So it was like, diversification of merchant accounts to protect
myself, so if this goes out and this goes out, I have protection.
So that was number one. Diversification of traffic sources,
yesterday’s podcast I talked about the Facebook slap, it’s coming.
If all your eggs are in the Zuckerberg basket, you could be in
trouble.
I know so many people that all their eggs were in Google’s
basket, it was PPC, and PPC shifted, businesses gone. When then it
went to SEO and SEO’s shifted, businesses gone. Diversifying your
traffic source, you need to make sure you’re doing traffic from at
least two sources. If you have a sales person, at least two sales
guys. If you’ve got a programmer, at least two programmers.
Diversification inside the business to protect, but not
diversification of your business. You shouldn’t be doing 5
different businesses. That’s the opposite of good.
So that’s number one. And then number two, is trying to remain
humble. And it’s hard sometimes. So it’s like, I need to keep
myself sufficiently humble, because if not I’m going to be humbled.
So it’s like, what does that mean? For me it means praying to God,
it means not being a jerk. It means remembering that it’s not me,
it’s an amazing team of people. It’s remembering that the only
reason I’ve been given these gifts and these blessings is because
there’s a purpose for it. I’m trying to help other people and if I
lose sight of those things, my head can grow fast.
And I understand, I have a fat head anyway, I can’t wear hats.
This is actually a true story. I can’t wear hats because I have a
fat, the circumference of my head is enormous. I’ve tried my whole
life to wear hats and I can’t. You’ll never see me in a hat ever,
because my head’s so fat.
So my head will continue to grow and swell, so that’s number
two. Just being aware of where you are on this pride cycle. If you
are sufficiently humble, that’s good, stay there. And then as you
start having success, try to stay humble because it’s hard.
Number two thing was, I look at all the people that I know, over
the last 15 years of doing this, and I’ve seen people go through
this cycle. The ones that don’t make it back up are the ones who
are too prideful to learn. It blows my mind. Between Christmas time
and now I’ve had three friends who have had businesses that have
crashed, that have come to me saying, “Russell, I see what you’re
doing. Is there any way I could come to your office and just shadow
you and see what you’re doing so I can understand and get my
business back up?” and all of them are close friends and I was
like, “yeah, I would definitely be game for that. But first you
gotta read my two books. Read Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets,
because that’s the foundation. So read those, then let me know and
you can come.”
So I told them that, and none of them have read the books and
won’t come. They won’t learn. I’m like, are you kidding me? I feel
like at this time of my life, I’m at the top of my game. Again,
this is me when my head starts to swell. I don’t think there’s a
lot of people who understand marketing better than me, at this
point, marketing and sales. Not because of a big ego, but I’ve
dedicated a decade and a half to this right, at a high level. Super
intense, super immersion, super not just theory, but testing and
testing. I don’t think there’s many people who know more than
that.
But I also think there’s more people that study more than me. I
still study because I want to stay sufficiently humble. I’m always
learning. I’m in mastermind groups, I pay other people for
coaching, I have multiple coaches happening all the time. On my
phone, if I was to show you my iBooks account, I have I would say
conservatively at this point, probably 350-400 thousand dollars in
courses on my phone that I listen to every single day. Old school
stuff, new stuff, I’m always trying to learn because I don’t want
the market to shift and me be left behind.
I need to be sufficiently humble so I can continue to learn, so
I can see what’s happening, be aware of the trends, be aware of the
evergreen things that are never going to shift. I’m always
learning. Partially for me and also, I heard Rick Chefren say this
one time, “I get paid to think for a lot of people. That’s why I
have to learn and study because I’m sharing with other people and
I’m thinking for other people.” I feel an obligation to that
too.
I have a lot of people following me and listening to me, and I
need to consume and learn and keep on top of the game so I can
continue to get back. Because I get paid from my tribe to
contribute back. So that’s number two.
And then the third thing is sometimes we need to cycle.
Sometimes it’s not always because you’re prideful, sometimes you’re
just going the wrong direction. I look at my business over the last
15 years, I was running in a direction, and I thought it was right
at the time, maybe it was right at the time. I learned a lot of
things and met a lot of people and we served people the best that
we knew at the time, and then everything crashed because that thing
shifted.
And then I started this direction, running, running, running the
best I could, the best that I understood. I made a lot of mistakes
but I met amazing people and I learned and learned and learned and
built this thing up and then it crashed again, and then it
shifted.
I look at during those times, during the crash, I was just
devastated. I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was
doing what I supposed to be doing, but it didn’t work so apparently
something was wrong. A lot of times, like with me, it’s not because
you’re doing something wrong, maybe God needed you over here, but
you were running this direction. So he had to force this thing so
you’d be humbled enough to listen, to move. And then boom, humbled
enough to listen and be able to move again.
I look at my life now, I look at the path, I look at the people
that I met because of these things that I wouldn’t have met
otherwise, that have built Clickfunnels. I met Todd because of a
crash here, I met Dave because of this, I met Brent, I met John, I
met all the people on my team, Ryan, and all these amazing, and I
mean there’s so many people on my team, I could go on for hours.
But those people, I picked up each of those people during these
journeys, these ups and these downs that became a part of our team
that made the foundation that we needed to be able to build
Clickfunnels.
I look at now, my life, I’m like, can you…those things were
necessary. So sometimes you can be doing everything right but you
just have to trust God. God may need your business to crash for him
to get you to where he needs you at. And it’s just being okay with
that. In fact, I was talking to, who was it the other day? Someone
the other day, about that in my own life. I was just like,
Clickfunnels is awesome. I love it, I believe it’s my mission. But
maybe this might not be the end mission. Maybe there’s something
I’m supposed to do over here. What does that mean? I don’t know
yet, I just need to pay attention. I try to be sufficiently humble
so that when it comes it’s like, maybe the business crashes, maybe
I need to sell the business, maybe I need to keep it forever. I
don’t know, just trying to be humble enough to listen so we know.
What’s the plan, where we’re trying to go.
So it’s just stepping back and putting our faith in God and
saying, look, I’ll go where you want me to go. I’ll do what you
need me to do. If you need this to end, that’s okay. What am I
going to learn from this? Where am I going to go from here.
So anyway, I hope that helps somebody out there who’s listening.
Because it’s pretty cool, pretty special. So there you go. There’s
the pride cycle. This is seminary, early morning seminary. I didn’t
go to early morning seminary. It’s seminary 101. But that’s what
happens.
So for you guys to understand, where are you at in the pride
cycle? Are you at the bottom, are you humble? It’s so awesome,
cherish that, study, learn, grow, stay humble, and then as you
start coming up towards the top, stay humble because that crash is
never fun. But if you do crash, understand there’s a purpose for
it.
Hope that helps you guys. I appreciate you all. Have an amazing
night. I’m going to get to bed, get a couple hours sleep before the
morning waits, a few hours. So much fun. I’ll talk to you guys
soon. Bye.
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