Somedays it makes you question why you’re still staying up late at night and waking up early to serve the audience that you love.
On today’s episode Russell talks about the mystery of why he continues to work so hard, even though the company would continue to thrive if he didn’t. Here are some of the amazing things he goes over on this episode:
-- What Russell thinks the answer is to a question his wife asked about why he continues to get stressed out and work extra hard, despite the company continuing to be successful.
-- Why Russell hates significance, but still needs it.
-- And what are the two things that Russell sees as his legacy.
So listen here to find out why Russell continues to work hard and go the extra mile for a company that would continue to grow and be successful even if he stopped working so hard.
And last night I was up until like 1:30 working on it, I got up early this morning and worked on it. And my wife asked me, she’s like, “Why are you doing this? You’re at a point in your life where you should not be stressed and should not be tired and should not be doing all these things.” Which makes you ponder, why am I doing this stuff?
-- 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.
Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m so excited to have you hear, let’s get started.
Alright everybody, so today, what should we talk about today? I know exactly what I want to talk about today. My kids started wrestling practice this week, which has been amazing. I love it. The only downside is I have to leave the office everyday at 3, which means I lose like 2 ½ hours of productivity each day, which is tough. But it’s been so much fun, I love it. My daughter’s being a stat girl this year too, which is really cool.
So I get to hang out with my 3 kids everyday and drive home with them and talk about fun stuff. It’s been really special, so I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything. But right now, over the next ten days we also have 3 events happening. Event number one is speaking at Justin Williams’ flip hacking live. And Justin and Tara, you guys have heard me talk about them in the past. They’re one of my favorite people. I don’t normally speak at people’s events anymore, and they asked me nicely and I just really like them, so I said, “Yes.”
Also, I’m doing a new form of my presentation, one that if it does well we’re going to be using for our speaker team, which we’ve been building out. And I’m also going to be using it at the 10x event in front of 35 thousand people. So it’s a good opportunity for me to test my material as I was telling you guys earlier. So that’s been really fun.
The next day we’re going to Salt Lake because Andrew Warner who runs Mixergy podcast, is my favorite interviewer ever. I listen to the podcast just because I love hearing the way he interviews people. Even though, a lot of the people he interviews I don’t really like as much, but him, he fascinates me. He had an interview on his podcast twice, and I’m like I want him to do a deep dive interview on the Clickfunnels startup story, because Mixergy is all about startup stories. And I asked him, I’m like, “Hey if we put on an event, would you come interview me for like two or three hours?” and he was like, “sure.” And he did that. So this Saturday we’re doing that, which is really cool.
I know a lot of you guys who are down in Utah are going to be coming to that. And before that we JP Sears coming to do standup comedy, which is going to be insane. So that’s happening on Saturday. Then I’m going to fly home, I’m home for two days again, and then Wednesday I fly out because we have the big Traffic Secrets event, which is because I am in the process of writing the Traffic Secrets book, and I found the easiest way to write a book is to do an event first where you teach everything and you found what…Again, it’s testing material right. What makes sense, what doesn’t make sense. What sticks, what doesn’t stick.
So man, I’ve re-written the outline like ten times and last night finally we came up with this new format that I’m really proud of and excited. But there’s a lot of work to do. In fact, I have 8 presentations I have not started creating yet that I have to create by next Wednesday, on top of everything else. And I’m still working on the presentation for the Friday event. So it’s just kind of, it’s a lot of chaos, I’m not going to lie.
And last night I was up until like 1:30 working on it, I got up early this morning and worked on it. And my wife asked me, she’s like, “Why are you doing this? You’re at a point in your life where you should not be stressed and should not be tired and should not be doing all these things.” Which makes you ponder, why am I doing this stuff? You know, the company’s growing whether I do this or not, the money’s coming in whether I do this or not, impact is happening whether I do it or not. Why am I doing this? What’s the purpose? It makes you think.
First off, is it because of significance? Do I need to feel more significant? And I would say that I’m sure that’s a piece of it. There’s something about working hard and creating and doing that makes you feel good about yourself, makes you feel significant. So I’m sure that’s a piece of it. So yes, I do want significance, it’s probably why I’m doing this. It’s probably why I’m telling you guys, because I get that hit of you guys being like, “Whoa, Russell works so hard.” And I’m like, it feels good.
Even though it’s a stupid reason, significance is like the stupidest…anyway, I hate significance, but we’ve got it, we’ve all got it. Initially, I’m sure that’s a big part of why I’m doing it. What else? Legacy, there’s something about writing books that leaves, I don’t know. Books are the most, I don’t know. When I pass away my book are the things….well, I’ll say two things. My family, number one, my family is the thing that I leave behind. I think that’s really the biggest impression of who you are, is that. We’ve talked a lot about that during this podcast.
David O Mackay said, “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” So that’s why I’m carving out so much time to go be with the kids. That’s the number one. So I think that legacy of your family and your kids is big, but then the second side, the reason why I’m writing another book, and I don’t have time to write a book but I have to write it. Do you know what I mean? There’s something about the legacy of it.
The Dotcom Secrets book and Expert Secrets book so far have been such a cool thing, to see how they stick and spread and people’s lives are impacted by them and I want that with Traffic Secrets. And then we’re going to be putting those three books into a box set which is so cool, which gives me more significance hit. So there’s more significance for you.
So there’s significance and legacy, which both are more significance. So then it’s like, is it all about me? Is that why I’m doing this? And I try to sit back and think, well if it was all about me, why wouldn’t I just stop or just take a nap? So there’s that thing, and it’s like, part of me is like, there’s this driving force.
We had last night, one of the people in our community, she’s a masseuse, she’s also doing Clickfunnels right now and stuff. It’s been fun watching her journey over the last year or so. And last night she came over and gave Collette and I a massage over at our house, which is really cool. In fact, two things happened this week. I had the person who normally cuts my hair, I had her come to my house and cut my hair, which was insane. Then I had the masseuse come to our house, which was insane.
There’s something about that, it’s funny, I had this conversation with Dana Derricks a little while ago through Voxer. He was like, “I’m driving to get my hair cut and I feel like it’s such a waste of time, the opportunity cost to get my hair cut is insane. I could spend $100, $200, $300 to get my hair cut and if they came to me it would be worth it because I’m not wasting that time driving. The opportunity cost of my time to drive to get my haircut.”
And ever since he said that, I always wanted my haircut girl to come to my house and cut my hair, and I never dared to. Then finally she quit where she was working at. I was like, “Uh, since you quit…” actually I had Melanie, she cuts Melanie’s hair too. I’m like, “Melanie can you find out if she can come to my house instead because that’d be awesome.” She said, “Yes.” So now she comes to my house to cut my hair which saves me so much time, energy and effort.
Anyway, I digress. The girl who came and gave us massages, she’s awesome. And she was talking about her new funnel and she’s selling a supplement and some of the things she’s doing and she’s like, “I’m working on traffic now.” And I’m like thinking about that and I was like, I told her, “my book’s coming out. It’s going to help you so much. I feel like as soon as you have this piece it’s going to help you even more.”
And it’s funny, she told me during the massage, “You know, Clickfunnels has changed my life. It’s made it so much easier and I’m able to do these things. Thank you so much for creating this thing that’s changed our business and changed what we’re doing.” I feel like I got 2/3rd of it. The Dotcom Secrets book gave people funnel structure. The Expert Secrets gave them how to do the storytelling and things you need to be able to convert through the funnels. And this is like the last piece, how you fill those funnels with people who want to buy your stuff.
And I feel like that’s the missing piece to our community, the people who are struggling are the people who can’t get traffic. And I feel like there’s going to be a storm coming. I feel like, and maybe I’m wrong, I hope I’m wrong. But I’ve lived through the Google Slap, and then more Google Slaps, and then you know, just thing after thing after thing. I’ve lived through the ups and the downs of the network. You know, Facebook came and there were some big, huge ups and then it went down a little bits, and then there were some ups again. And right now we’re in kind of this limbo zone where it’s going to be interesting to see what Zuckerberg does long term.
But I, just knowing platform owners, they usually end up screwing us over at some point. So I’m preparing for that and I’m like, “Man, if I don’t prepare our community for that when the tide changes, if they’re not prepared as a whole, a lot of people are going to lose their businesses.” And this book for me is like a safety net. It’s like, I gotta create this thing, it’s a safety net for our community. We’re at 68,000 members. Yesterday I saw active members, and I have this responsibility to them like, I have to protect you. I have to give you the tools and training and structure you need because when this tide shifts, I just know that if it shifts and Facebook stops being amazing…..
I remember when Google did it that first time. Everyone was doing Google PPC, this was 12-13 years ago. And everyone was killing it, when they slapped everyone, most people didn’t know what to do. And it was a couple of years for people to recover, and most people didn’t recover, by the way. Most people I know who were killing it back then are no longer around right now. But those who were able to hold it out for 2-3 years before they could figure out the next phase, those are the ones that survived.
And then SEO was a thing and then a slap. And then solo ads were a thing, and then that shifted. There’s just been these shifts up and down and I feel like my job and my calling in this platform I have, this spot is to protect our audience and to prepare them for what’s coming ahead. And I can feel that, I can see it, I know it’s going to happen. So the Traffic Secrets book is something that’s slap-proof. The way I’m trying to teach it and structure it is not like, “Here’s a shiny object today. Here’s how to do interest targeting on Facebook.” Because that’s going to come and go.
I want this book to be evergreen so that no matter what the ups and downs are, no matter what the pitfall is, no matter what. The tempest tries to destroy you, you’ll be prepared for it and you’ll be able to easily shift and move to the next thing. And it’s been interesting, this is like my 15th year in this business and I can tell you the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds I’ve seen who have come and gone. And it’s usually during these shifts that they disappear. They get really good at one way of driving traffic and then it shifts and they lose their entire business.
So that’s my job and my goal with this new book, is to prepare people. So I feel like that’s the bigger calling. Is to, I don’t know. Do you guys feel that same way about your audience? I hope you do. Where you feel like this, you feel indebted to then to, or you feel like it’s your job or your role to protect them and make sure they have what they need. And I think for me right now, that’s the biggest drawing force that’s pulling me to do stuff this weekend, to tell Clickfunnels startup story, because you’re going to see the ups and the downs, the ups and the downs.
To create this presentation that I can give to a speaker team, so these guys can go out and just spread our message, to be able to do this event on Traffic Secrets, so that I have the outline for the book, and then the book can be published so I can get that out to you, so you’ve got the framework you need to be protected during the upcoming days.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at. With that said, I’m sitting in a parking lot. I need to go in there and I gotta finish slides because I fly out tonight and I got a lot of work to do. So thanks for listening. I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you guys allowing me to just kind of share my thoughts in this format, and hopefully you get value from it every single day.
If you do, please take a screenshot of this podcast right now, go on Facebook and Instagram and share it, hashtag Marketing Secrets, and tag me on it, so I can see it. I appreciate you guys sharing this and telling people about it. Also if you’ve got time, jump on iTunes rate and review; I would love that as well. And if you want to get the Cliff notes of the first 500 episodes, go to marketingsecrets.com/blackbook, where you can down the black book’s pdf, a couple hundred page pdf that Julie Stoian put together. She went through and listened to the first 500 episodes, picked out the 99 best, rewrote them into an easy guide to read. And it’s something I think you guys will love. So go to marketingsecrets.com/blackbook to grab that for free today.
Thanks so much you guys, appreciate you all, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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