What Is the Big Domino?

A new way to look at the “big domino” and how it’ll help you function as an entrepreneur.

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---Transcript---

What's up everybody, good morning. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that I know all of us entrepreneurs deal with a lot, which is pressure and noise. If you listen to Alex Charfen, if you studied him, the entrepreneur personality type, he talks a lot about how entrepreneurs, when you are able to lower pressure and noise, you can do greatness. You can change the world, but when the pressure and noise gets higher, it gets really difficult. And oftentimes it turns into chaos and into bad things. And so I talk about that during this episode, because I'm in definitely a state of increased pressure noise and I want to talk about what I'm doing to deal with it and how it's helping. So with that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song. When we come back, we're going to dive deep.

All right. So sure, like most of you and every... Okay, what step you are in your entrepreneurial journey? If you are beginning, if you are growing, if you are scaling, if you are selling, if you are buying, if you were like, whatever you're doing, there are times when you have increased pressure and noise. And Alex Charfen's one of my friends, I love his stuff. He was one of our head coaches for two comma club, X coaching program for a while. And he has a whole message, he talks about entrepreneurial personality types, EPT as he calls it, people like us. and he always says, "You're not broken, you're not weird, you're just different. You're and entrepreneur and that's okay." And in his teachings, he talks a lot about just how entrepreneurs, a lot of times we think we're crazy. And like a lot of times entrepreneurs are the ones who snap and go crazy and go off the deep end and other times they're the ones who are creating the most amazing things in the world.

And he talks about there's this fine line between greatness and chaos, right? And for entrepreneurs, the biggest thing you do is you have to if you can decrease the pressure noise around you, then you can succeed. But when the pressure noise goes up, that's where you typically, they crash and burn. If you think about if you've had a chance to crash and burn a business or two, you probably know it was during a season or a time of increased pressure noise, and it's hard to handle it. And that's when things happened, right? That's why it's so important to build a team and to have people around you and things help support you to decrease the pressure noise so you can succeed.

So there's a little mini chunk out of Charfen's training so you guys understand kind of the context I'm talking about. But in my life over the last 30 days, has been an insane, increase in pressure noise. I can't talk about all the things, but people I love who I work with daily, or who have had health issues that I was not expecting, there's that. And then we just finished our first acquisition and we were in the middle of our second acquisition, so new companies coming in. We also have Funnel Hacking Live in 30 days. We also have a new coaching program that we are changing. We also have, I can't tell you all the things, there's a lot of stuff and it's exciting. And it's partially, it's the most exciting time of the business, right? I just have so many fun things and so many things I'm excited for it.

But then on the other side, man, between all these things, I was not planning over the last 30 days the pressure and noise and things have gone up dramatically. And I don't know about you guys, but it's made it for me it's hard to sleep at night. I lay there in bed I'm so tired but I can't sleep because there's just these things happening and all the stuff and the stress and all the balls you're juggling, you don't want to drop them, right? And I'm curious, have you guys ever felt that before? And for me, the last month it's been hard to sleep. And then I come into the office and there's so many things to do that half of them I don't know where to start and there's this and there's this and there's this and all of them are on fire. And it's overwhelming sometimes.

And so it's interesting because by default I want to get things done so I go and I start working, I'm trying to get task after task. But it seems like an insurmountable thing. And so earlier this week, I had a thought, and you guys have heard me talk about the big domino before, right? In every sales presentation, it's one big domino. If you can knock down that one domino, it takes care of everything else and all the other dominoes fall down.

And it's true in selling, but it's true in a lot of aspects of life, right? And I started looking at all my big, huge tasks and all the things. Each to do had like 500 little sub to do's. Instead of looking at all the sub to do's, I started looking at the bigger tasks with bigger project and saying, "Okay, what's the one big domino I can do that's going to knock down all these little tasks?" There's no way I can do all of them, it's virtually impossible. What is the big domino or who is the big domino? Who is the person that's going to come that could take this off of my plate? What's been interesting is to be able to look at this differently, I've had to completely slow down, which has been hard for me because I'm like, "I'm not going to make it to the finish line if I stop." But at the same time, I'm not going to make the finish line no matter what.

So, it's forced me to stop and say, "I got to find the person or the thing or whatever that's going to knock this thing down." It's made me sit there in my thoughts for a lot longer, which has been good. And I've often thought of how do I get done with the task? The thought is like, "Who is the person I can find it or what's the process or thing I need to do that gets rid of all the other tasks so I can actually make it to the finish line?" And as I've been doing that, it's been interesting because sometimes you ask better questions, you get better answers.

And so that's the question I started asking. And all of a sudden the answer started coming clear and it was like, "Okay, well if I had a person for here, this would make all these things disappear." I'm like, "Well, who's the person for that? I don't know somebody." And it's like, "Okay, let's think." And sitting in your thoughts and thinking and thinking and praying and thinking and trying to figure things out. And all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, what about this person? Or how about this? Or how about this?" Or literally one of the things was a text message from a friend who was like, "Hey, there's this person you should meet." And it's like, "Oh my gosh, that person I think is the big domino is can knock down this set of things for me."

And it's been interesting because this week I had a whole task list of stuff I had to get done and I had not had a chance to do my tasks yet. But I've had longer meetings, which I hate meetings. Typically, I have slow two to three hour meetings with certain people to build a relationship, to be able to hand the reins to somebody to then go and knock down the domino for me. And I can tell you Friday was the first time this happened. I remember leaving Friday and it was the first night I was just not stressed. When I left, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this might be possible." And today I did it again and it's like, "Okay, this might actually be possible." And it wasn't for me speeding up or spending more hours or doing more things. It was me stopping, stepping back and trying to figure out the big domino.

So for you guys, as you are entrepreneurs and you have increased pressure noise, and you're stressing about all the things, I want to encourage you to slow down, or maybe even stop for a moment and look at those tasks differently. Not from "How in the world am I going to get get this done, where am I going to find the extra time?" But, "Who is the big domino or what is the big domino that if I can figure that out, it makes all these other ones irrelevant."

And that's been the thing for me that's keeping me sane. It's getting me excited and helping me to now finally starting to see the finish line again. Like, "Oh my gosh, it's there, I can see it, it's possible, you're saying there's a chance I could actually make it to the end." And so, as I'm getting through that and again, I spent two and a half hours meeting somebody today and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I feel better. I'm going to probably sleep tonight a little bit. I'm pumped about that." It made me think I'm going to stop for a second and just do a quick podcast for my people, because I'm sure some of you guys are in that same season. If you're not now, you will be soon.

And so just remembering the big domino concept in a way that you can solve these kind of problems for yourself. So I hope that helps, I hope that was useful. I'm grateful for all you guys for listening, for subscribing, for paying attention. I'm trying to serve you at my highest level and sometimes it's overwhelming, but I feel like we're doing good work. And I feel like the fruits of this stuff that we're creating for you guys right now is going to change a lot of lives, hopefully your life. So keep your eyes out. Everything from Funnel Hacking Live until January of 20, whatever next year is, 2022, it's going to be a crazy ride. You'll see a lot of stuff happened and it's going to be, fun. So I'm pumped. I'm pumped to show you what we've been working on.

That's all I got. There's the tease. All right, appreciate you all each for listening and we'll talk to you all soon. Bye, everybody.

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