Your supporters might be secretly mad at you if you're neglecting to do this simple thing.

On this episode Russell talks about validation and why it’s important to validate people when they have done a great job. You’ll also hear from Julie Stoian at the mastermind event talking about how validation motivated her into working harder. Here are some of the cool things you will hear in today’s episode:

-- How Julie helped Russell realize that he needs to be better about validating people when they do things well.

-- Why Russell and Dave validating Julie motivated her to keep going and to work harder in the affiliate contest.

-- And why validation is important in all aspects of life, not just business.

Listen here for that and more on this episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast.

...when I see my customers or my clients floundering but they’re really trying, and I’m not talking about the trolls and the thugs and the people who are just the complainers, but the people who are really trying and they’re just drowning. That one seed of “hey, I hear you.” can change everything and that’s what it did for me.

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What’s up everybody, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to another episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast. This one, we’re staying in the affiliate event. I’ve got so many more cool things to share with you guys. I want to talk about a concept that was brought to my attention again called validation.

Alright so at this affiliate mastermind group we had again, our top 20 affiliates were there. And one of the people who came was an unlikely person on our leader board, I say unlikely because I didn’t know much about her prior to this, but now that I know her, it’s very likely. There’s a reason why she’s successful and I hope she knows that if she’s listening to this. But it’s Julie and if you guys watched the affiliate contest you saw it, she did awesome throughout the contest and she came in and ended up being on the top ten leader board, ended up being number 4 I believe in this contest.

She has become the first Clickfunnels affiliate to win a car, Julie Stoian and a whole bunch of other awesome stuff. What’s interesting is she joined this contest, I didn’t know these things, it was in the middle of her moving, she was in the middle of her own product launch, a bunch of stuff and she started going and she started trying to be part of this launch and help support us. Throughout the launch, first off I guess and I didn’t know this, a bunch of people were doing Facebook Live’s with me and she wanted to do a Facebook Live and I guess she reached out to Dave and asked, and Dave was like, “We can’t, Russell’s got 30 a day and we just can’t do it.”

And rightfully so, she was kind of upset about that. A little while later, other things happened and she kind of blew up and it was funny, it was the first time she’d really been brought to my attention. I was watching her videos and I was just like, man, she’s killing herself trying to help support us and I was so grateful for that. And she was upset, which always adds a little layer of whatever. I saw her video and I was just like, at first I was kind of hurt, oh man. Then I started comments and the more I started reading I was like, she said something that she kind of dropped in a comment, “He won’t even let me do an interview with him.”

I was like, “She just wanted to do an interview?” So I just posted, “Do you just want to do an interview. We can do that.” And she wrote back, “Yes, I’d love to. I’m like, “Okay, if that’s it, let’s just do an interview, that’d be fine.” And we ended up doing the interview and she sold a bunch of books and she kept doing it and she ended up being number 4.

And she came to this event and she was talking about the top 10 or 15 things she’d learned through this affiliate contest, which were really, really cool. I’m not going to share all of them, because obviously a lot of the stuff that was shared at the event is private for those who were there. But one of the things that was interesting is she talked about is just validation. How me and Dave Woodward on our team, how us validating her, is what got her to keep moving forward. And I’m going to show that clip really quick so you guys can kind of just hear her say in her own words why that was so important, because it’s interesting and I want you guys to hear that. And then when we come I wanted to kind of talk about that because it’s important to so many aspects of our lives. So let’s watch that clip right now.

Julie: At one point in the contest, I was angry. I was really angry because I had asked for an interview and I didn’t get one, and then I saw other people getting one that were further down the list than me and I was just, I was mad and I felt like I was missing out and my feelings were hurt, but I was angry. So I posted on Facebook that I was mad about the $20 bid, and I also didn’t understand the context of the whole Dream 100 because I’d never gotten any of the other packages because I wasn’t part of Russell’s Dream 100.

So I felt like I was in this ridiculous game where the rules were changing and I wanted their attention and I wasn’t getting it. Well Dave and Russell both validated me and from that moment on I went from “I don’t know if I want to do this. Maybe I’m going to quit.” To “I’m yours forever.” The validation that happened at that moment of being able to reach out and say, “I see you. I see what you’re doing, I’m appreciative. Do you want an interview?” I had all kinds of motivation I never had before.

So in my own business, when I see my customers or my clients floundering but they’re really trying, and I’m not talking about the trolls and the thugs and the people who are just the complainers, but the people who are really trying and they’re just drowning. That one seed of “hey, I hear you.” Can change everything and that’s what it did for me. Because I was ready to quit and then Russell and Dave reached out and I was like, I’m not quitting. It completely changed it for me when you guys reached out. I was done. So in business that matters to me, and I think that’s how I’ve created customers for life in my own business. And why I got as far as I did.

Russell: It’s interesting huh, how us validating her got her to go and do these things and to do stuff. I started thinking back about my life, in fact Brandon Fisher who’s one of our main video guys, he talked about this too as well. When I validate, or when someone validates his work or whatever it might be, how powerful that is. And a lot of time, and I forget this and I wish I was better at it. But a lot of times your employees or your spouse or your kids, a lot of times they’re doing stuff because they love you and appreciate you and want you to be happy and I think sometimes, especially in the business world we get caught up in, “What do they want? They want a raise.” And we think about that because it’s the monetary side.

But a lot of times it’s, a lot of people that’s important obviously, but what’s more important sometimes is validation, saying “Thank you.” Saying, “You did a great job.” And I’m not perfect at that. I struggle with that. I wish I was better at that. But it kind of brought it back to my attention and I feel like the team we’ve built at Clickfunnels is second to none. And I feel like one of my roles that I need to become better at is validating people and just thanking them for what they do and telling them they did a good job and things like that.

So I’m making more of a conscious effort of that, to do it more often. Because it’s been interesting, as I’ve built this company with my team, even when I said the word “I” right there, I said “I’ve been building..” I felt like that’s not true. Is that weird. I was like that wasn’t true. So let me step back, as we’ve been building Clickfunnels, because it has not been me. It’s been a team, an army of the most amazing people on earth who have built that together.

A lot of times people think it’s me because I’m the bouncing monkey, “Oh get Clickfunnels.” But I’m just one little piece of this machine that’s been growing. A lot of times I get validation from the market, which makes me feel good. People like my comments, or they comment or share or whatever and I get the pat on the back for a job well done but for the rest of the team, they don’t necessarily get that. It’s just coming from me or coming from somebody else. So I think sometimes I forget that because I get the ego boost. I mean that’s why.

Honestly though, why do I share so many videos? Why do I do podcasts? Why do I do so much stuff?  I like the validation. I like when I put something cool out there and people are like, “Dude, that was awesome.” I get that validation and I think too often I don’t give it to the people who are the rest of the army behind what we’re doing. And a lot of times my family, my kids, my wife….It was a good reminder for me, it was humbling. I hope it’s a good reminder for you too.

With that said, thanks again for listening to this episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast. If you loved this episode, if you love anything you’ve learned so far, please share this. Let other people know about it. Last I checked we were number 5 in the business category. We’ve been beating out some of the legends and we’ve been there for a long time now. And the way we get to number one is you guys sharing, telling other people about it, binge listening. In fact, the best thing to increase the ratings of the podcast for all of us is for you guys to binge listen.

So if you like this one, go back to episode number one and go through these things together this weekend and let’s binge listen together, it’ll be kind of fun. Appreciate you guys. We’ll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.