13min chapter

Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson cover image

Family, Faith, and Business: A Deep Dive of “Atlas Shrugged” with Josh Forti (4 of 5)

Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson

CHAPTER

The Art of Simplifying Complex Ideas

This chapter explores the evolution of entrepreneurship and the significance of simplifying complex messages for effective communication. Drawing on personal experiences and the world of marketing, the speaker emphasizes the importance of storytelling and collaboration in leadership. Additionally, they reflect on the traits of influential figures, advocating for humility and teamwork over ego in the pursuit of success.

00:00
Speaker 2
So this is seemingly unrelated to this, but I think that
Speaker 1
I can tie it back in because
Speaker 2
it's a question that I think fits in here. So do you, I'm going to start with a super basic question, which I think the answer is obvious, but like we'll go down this road. Do you feel misunderstood as an entrepreneur? I
Speaker 1
did early on. I did less so now why is that um when i got started entrepreneurship has become more of a cool thing that's true in the last decade since shark tank stuff back when i first started it wasn't everyone was confused like why would you do that it is cooler um also it's like i think the more you, the more you either alienate people or you attract people. And I think a lot of people who I have alienated have been alienated. And I think I've attracted people I've attracted. So like my bubble of people around me are people who understand this lingo who relate to it. So it's less hard now than it was initially.
Speaker 2
Do you ever feel, so like, I believe that one of my super, like your superpower, like your art, your format is like marketing and funnels, funnels specifically. Like that's like what you do. And like, I feel like you could just sit there for hours, hours and days and forever for the rest of all of time. Right. Like my superpower thing that I like to do is this like communication. I love constructing words in a way that people can understand. Right. Did you? I'm sure not. But like the Kanye West interview that joe rogan just did like three days ago i've heard about it okay so like this has been a long awaited episode for like everyone thought it was ever gonna happen right because it was like teased and it wasn't didn't happen finally happens and so like i see this i had no idea it was coming it like drops and i'm a huge fan of joe rogan right and i'm like oh my gosh it's amazing right and i sit down and i look online and all these people are like terrible interview not worth your time couldn't get past the first 20 minutes like anything like that i'm like what so i go and the first 20 minutes we're kind of like and whatever i get done with this three-hour interview it's like top three interviews of all time right and what's interesting is like do you know kanye about like how kanye communicates like at all like do you know okay so like kanye there's so many references i want to use it like so like like kanye like sees the world like fundamentally differently and like how joe describes it in there and the way that i described it is like you wouldn't know this like i said because psychedelic it's like a drug or whatever but like imagine being on like a psychedelic drug like in a small format like at all times like that's how his mind works like it's like sees everything it's like expanded and so even kanye said he's like the reason i have such a hard time communicating sometimes is because i have to like i see things in three-dimensional and then i have to put them in in a two-dimensional conversation right now i'm not trying to compare myself the way i think to the way kanye thinks but like that this concept of like him people think he's beating around the bush right when really he's just trying to explain something. Like one of the things I love doing is taking a concept like that and figuring out how to describe it in a way the average person can understand. Cause like I, I live in a different world. Like just like you live in a different world than the average person does. Like I live in a different world and that is by choice. Like I do not see the world the way that most people do. I intentionally do not want to see the world the way that other people do. Like everything that I do, like I will intentionally engineer where like my life is different than the average person. Cause I want to to see the world differently but I want to be able to communicate that in a way that they can understand and so my question is like do you think that there's a lot of great ideas stuck inside of producers heads that if more people understood them and thought like that we could change the world for the better but because they're stuck in their head and that person doesn't know how to communicate it well or not focused on that that they that that effect never happens yes yeah so
Speaker 1
i would say and that's why i think for me the this study this art of like funnels and copywriting and story does is so fascinating because that's what it is right like i was i always picture like when we have an idea in my head it's like this big granite block right it's like this is the idea and to give it to somebody like this is the idea you're like i don't get it, right? Right. And then you start thinking about, who is it? Start chiseling away at the stone, right? You start chiseling, chiseling. So eventually you have this, like, amazing statue, right, of, like, this thing that people can see and they can understand and they can gravitate towards. I feel like it's the same thing with communication, right, or with any kind of idea you're trying to sell. Like, the funnel is one thing. Like, right now like hey you should buy my coaching programs like why like oh it's too big like i need to take them to a path to simplify that so it's like a step-by process which is like chiseling away but then inside each step the process there's like the words and the stories and things you communicate to simplify it to get more and more fine-tuned like that's why for me like when we create a funnel we launch it it's like they're taking this big granite block and chiseling down to like now something that somebody can come in on this side of it. They go through a process. By the time they're done at the end, they're going to give us money. They're going to get a product and they're going to change. Like something's going to change for them. I think that that's what marketing is, right? It's that process of like trying to simplify the message. And I think 100% that's why most ideas don't get out. Right? How many times, like, I don't know. How many times have you had, and this kind of comes back to talk about who knows an hour or two ago too, but like four or five people get the same idea, but then one person executes on it. It's like the person who understands the communication the best is the one typically who gets it out. Right. Like, um, how much of your life and my life has been focused on the communication. And I don't necessarily like that much, that part as much. Like it's not my favorite part, but it's such an essential tool. I remember when I was learning, when i got in this game and i was trying to sell my very first product zip brander and i was like i put it up at a picture of it buy now button and like tried to send traffic nobody bought and someone's like we need a headline so i'm like okay so put a headline like we need like tell us what this does and so i like found some sites i kind of modeled what they did and the people started buying and it was just like it was like learning that process of how do you communicate i remember thinking like i never want to learn how to write community like for me it was copy that's what we all call back to like i don't want to write copy like i don't want to do that that sounds horrible um and i want to hire someone but like people i tried to hire was expensive it was like 10 to 20 000 for a sales letter i couldn't afford it so i'm like i have to learn this art of how to communicate and like so grateful because like that's how everything we built has been is off like the communication of an idea and doing it in a way
Speaker 2
that gets people to move how do you decide what you're going to communicate like you have a lot of ideas in your head yeah and you have a lot of different thoughts on everything and like you choose to share funnels and marketing primarily and then you have some religion in there which i would say probably like number two maybe ish like what you communicate that's like it like how do you decide the battles
Speaker 1
i want to choose yeah yeah battles um that's a good question i think i mean part of it's like what's interesting like why did i want to do this interview like i read the book it was fascinating like and i don't know the answers and i thought this would be a fun way to talk it out loud like this fascinating funnels are fascinating to me because like i can apply it to so many things. Um, you know, when I talk a lot about wrestling, but not bump into, I talk about that. Like, um, so I think, I think, um, it's just the, the, the ideas that fascinate me that I feel like have the most validity and can, can do the most, you know, again, as an introverted person, I don't typically go out and have conversations with people. Cause I'm like, uh, you know, as much as i can but if i find something like that does cause an effect right that's why like i practice telling my story so many times and i'll do a podcast and because like i know like now when i'm on stage in front of 9 000 people the stories and get people to move because i practice excuse me i practice it so i think it's i'm putting a lot of things out in the water and then seeing what things people relate to and then i go deeper on the ones that are like okay this one had an impact a lot of stuff i remember yeah i remember in first version.com secrets um there were seven or eight chapters more that never got published i was going to publish them all do you have copies of those it was like yeah all my best stuff at the time i knew and i was going to publish it and it was all in the book i remember i heard an interview with um tim ferris and ryan holiday It was Ryan Holiday at the time. And they were both talking – anyway, talking about their books. Both of them said that when they write a typical book – you know, Tim Ferriss' books are like this fat. My first draft was like twice as big. It's like to make a book go from good to great, it's not like adding more. It's cutting. It's like I cut two-thirds of my book to give you this one. And then I think it was ryan said the same thing he's like it's not like he's like saying that my books start the final the first draft is twice as big as the final one then next section just cut cut cut cut i remember going back dot com secrets that night and i was like okay based on that if i like what would i cut how would that do and i cut seven chapters out and after it's done i was like so scared i'm like this is like i love these things but i was like those things aren't that important to like get people what they need to actually be successful. Some of those things end up being in.com secrets and expert secrets in different places. But, yeah. I was going to say, I wonder if she just published the first thing or if she, like, had a 2,700 book and
Speaker 2
cut something out of it. That's crazy. Okay. Back to the question in the car. And I want to tie this back to the book how has growing a multi-hundred million dollar like making hundreds of millions of dollars having a roughly billion dollar company being the ceo of 400 employees like how has that changed your perspective
Speaker 1
of the world i think so many i could respond i i think there was a there was a season in my life where i thought that like if i was going to create something if i was going to do something that like the way i was gonna do it by by me does that make sense yeah and um in fact if you look at my history the first decade of business businesses were about me they were me they were i was the sole owner the sole purpose you know person um and on this journey when we started it was it was so different it was like how do we like what's the team look like how do we like who you know todd was my first time i had a partner it was like that was so scary for me and then that's been the greatest thing i possibly could have done right and then brought in other partners and then employees and man and like stuff and like i don't know it's just it's been fascinating just realizing that like to build this it wasn't about me it was about um i don't just just that that whole thing i think um anything great a lot of times there's a person that gets credit for like elon musk gets credit because he's whatever bill gates or whoever the people that get the credit for but it's like you start really seeing um how many people are involved to make something amazing you know i mean i think that's the biggest thing for me was i started growing it and it's it's frustrating not frustrating for me because i enjoy it i like i like you know people always are also been meant to click funnels i'm like i literally don't know how to code anything i got there's not one dot of code in that word that i like maybe once i leaned over todd's shoulder put a button and then he had deleted like you know i think it's cool when you see that like the like how many and i before fun i can live every time we start we bring our whole team together and i see you know i'm the one who's on stage but i am fully aware that like that it is not me like this is us Like, like it wasn't for this team and these people, like all of you guys, for all your contribution, this wasn't possible. I want to always ground that. Cause I think sometimes that the leader or whoever gets a big head where they think it's them. And I, I don't know. And I see that with a lot of people who are on big stages where they still drink their own Kool-Aid. So I think it's them. And I think that's my shift in the world just understand like the great things like the things that we remember the things that that our legacies that go on and on and on there may be a maybe a head or a person that like that the branding are tied to but it's like there's this group of people that created something amazing that's but how did you like
Speaker 2
how do you stay grounded like one of the the things that i like i am a huge fan of russell brunson right like i like because like for me like you're the person i look up to as not just hey you taught me how to make a lot of money but like hey i like i want to i want to be like i want to have a character that you have i don't want to have like i look at grant cardone and i i don't you don't have to talk smack about grant cardone but i can right and like Grant Cardone is really, really full of himself. Right. And like, don't get me wrong. Like I've learned a lot from Grant Cardone, especially about money. Like he's changed my perspective about a lot of things. I'm like eternally grateful for that. But if like, if I grew up to be Grant Cardone, like where that was the focus. I mean, like I watched him, I was, I was there when, you know, is the, the stadium down in Miami or whatever. Right. When it was, you know, it was all about him. And it was, I think he even got up on stage and was like, oh yeah, Russell, everybody says Russell's the greatest salesman, but I'm the one that packed the house. Right. And I'm like, dude, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, why, why is that necessary? And so like, how do you, how do you stay grounded? Right. Because like, I think there's, it's so fascinating to like watch different type people. like ty lopez for example like for a while there it was like all about time like now he's kind of like gone more behind the scenes but i'm like each person i watch whether it's ty or gary or grant like they all have a different way about them and like you have your way about them like the one that ice is like the most grounded humble like is like there's nobody that's looking at you you get up on stage and you're like
Speaker 1
oh yeah everyone's all brought that you know what i mean like you know it's
Speaker 2
awkward like right and then you meet you walk up and grant's like but like you it's like yeah it's that awkward of like hey i'm just over here like how are you grounded in that like how do you how do you not let it get
Speaker 1
to your head because it would be so easy for you to to get wrapped up in your own head someone told me it's because my wife they said if you'd married anybody else you had to be
Speaker 2
so big i think um well so i like met your wife for the first time today i mean like we had crossed paths but um i said when you were getting haircut um i was like so what's it like being married to Russell?

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