Most Popular Podcast of 2020 - How To Shortcut Success

What a year 2020 was! It was definitely a crazy, eventful year. Here is a replay of our most popular episode from all of 2020! If you haven’t heard it yet, tune in and see what all the fuss is about! If you have already listened to this episode, feel free to share it with a friend!

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Hey, what’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to talk about shortcuts.

Okay so, I don’t know, if you follow me on Instagram you’ve probably seen the pieces of it, but I’ve been slightly cracking over the last 5 or 6 weeks because the load has been heavy, like insanely heavy. In fact, 6 weeks ago I made a list of all the stuff I have to do and I was just like, ‘I don’t think this is possible.” And couple of nights I couldn’t sleep, I was up until like 4 or 5 in the morning because I couldn’t fall asleep because I stressed about it. Which then made it worse because the next day I couldn’t even function, I was tired and losing days and it was just like, ugh.

Anyway, but I’m at the end. I’m at the last week. And in a week from now I’m going to be on vacation for like 2 weeks with my family and just unplug and (breathes deeply) catching a breath of fresh air. But it’s been heavy. And it’s interesting because yesterday, well, this weekend my sister came into town, which has been so much, her whole family.

 So it’s like, I hate, I don’t want to ever be the person who misses the party because of work. So I’m like, ‘I have to be part of the party.” So I’m doing all this stuff and making sure I’m not, that I’m there. And yesterday, my daughter, it’s not her birthday yet, but they all went to roaring springs, which is a big water park here, for her birthday. So I’m like, “I can’t miss that.” So I ended up waking up at like 5 in the morning and worked from 5 til noon, getting basically a whole full work day in. Then I took off, went with them to Roaring Springs until like 8 o’clock at night we got back. And then I worked from 8 until like 2:30 in the morning. So I worked like 2 shifts that day, plus the shift with the kids.

So sleep is like, basically I’m like, ‘I gotta get rid of something, the only thing I can get rid of is sleep. I’m not getting rid of fun, I’m not getting rid of family, I’m not getting rid of projects. I’m going to pull out sleep and just get rid of it.” which you can’t do for too long.

Anyway, now it’s Tuesday so I got Tuesday and Wednesday for me to go and getting all the new coaching modules that are going to be launching next week. I have to get those all done, then plus I have a 3 day event, which is a virtual event, which means I’m the only one there speaking. So I’ve got a dozen or so presentations or so that I’m working on there, needless to say it is a lot. The burden is heavy. But the good news is it’s almost the end. The end of this week I’m going to be able to unplug and just be like, (breathes).

So what I want to talk about though, is shortcuts. Because in the process of this, as I’m moving forward as fast as I can to get all these things done, I have to look for shortcuts, because there’s no way to get everything done. It’s impossible. So you have to look for shortcuts.

So one of the nice things that I like about this whole, I don’t know maybe it’s bad, but for me, I try to get everything, I don’t pre…..not that I don’t pre-plan, I just, it’s like, just in time production. Like, everything will get done just in time. It doesn’t get done early ever. It never has in my entire life. I never got homework done until the minute it was due. I never got projects done, because if it’s like, if I plan it too far in advance then I have all this time to think, and then , I don’t know, the greatness comes when you’re under pressure and stressed, and you start discovering these shortcuts.

So yesterday, we got back from the water park, I’m sitting there, it’s like 8 o’clock, almost 8 o’clock at night, I’m about to start working on the modules again. I’m just like, “I’m not going to get this done in time.” And I’m thinking, “how can I shortcut this? How can I shorten this?” I’m looking for the shortcut right. And then it appeared. And the shortcut in this situation was, “Who’s products, who’s content, who’s courses could I license to shortcut what I’m doing?”

And all the sudden I was like, “Oh my gosh.” There was this module I had to create and it probably would have, I mean realistically it would take about a week to create the whole thing. And it would have been good, but I don’t know if it could have been great. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s someone in our community who creates something that’s great. Can I shortcut, I wonder if she’d be willing to let me license it?”

So I called her up through Voxer, I’m like, “Hey, I need a quick favor. Would you be willing to license me your entire course?” and within about 15 minutes we figured out a deal and a structure and today I’m wiring her money and she’s sending me her course, and I’m going to be plugging that into the training to fill this gap.

And what’s crazy is it just shortcutted me a week. I just bought myself a week back that I would have had to figure out somewhere, like on the boat in Lake Powell. That wouldn’t have worked. Anyway, but I bought myself a week back. And the reality is what she created was so much better than what I had created. Like it’s already, man, I’m looking at the stuff that she’s sending over and I’m like, “This is way better than what I would have done.” She’s so much more detail oriented and everything is more thought through. But it was just a shortcut. It was a shortcut that saved me a week worth of time, it saved me so much stress and anxiety, and then it actually turned out better than if I would have done it myself.

So it got me thinking like, where else can I shortcut things? I’m looking at now everything I’m doing right now in this window. I’m like, what can I not do? What can I give someone else? What’s the things? Where can I shortcut things? So for me it was licensing a course, and licensing content. And then this morning I licensed 3 other people. I’m like, “Hey, you’ve got something like this, do you have any product I can license? Or a course or a thing I can license? I gotta teach this concept but you know better than I do. Can I license it?” and people are sending me stuff, and I’m speeding up my process.

Anyway, I want to share this because I had this conversation with Todd who, those who don’t know Todd Dickerson, he’s my business partner at Clickfunnels, he’s a dude who built the original Clickfunnels. He’s a genius. Literally the smartest person I’ve ever met. Don’t tell him that because his head will get bigger. No, he’s like literally the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life.

And it’s funny because we were talking about him and other developers and things like that, and he said, he told me, “The thing that makes me the best of developers is because I’m so lazy.” I’m like, “What? Dude you are not lazy. You are the hardest worker.” He’s like, “I know I’m a hard worker,” but he’s like, “The reason why I’m such a good developer and I get things done so fast is because I look at everything and I’m like, oh I can do this and there’s a 6 month version and I could do this and it could get done in 6 months.  But is there a way I can get this done in 2 days instead?” And that’s the thought he always looks at. “Instead of me coding the whole thing from scratch, if I borrow this here and this here, and then get these libraries…” I don’t know, this is all coding talk I don’t understand, “then I could get done in 2 days versus 6 months. Maybe I’d have to not do these 4 or 5 features, but it’s done in 2 days versus 6 months.”

And it’s funny because he’s trained our development team to start thinking that way. In fact, Ryan Montgomery who was our CTO for a long time, that was always the joke for him, it’s like, ‘When you look at problem you’re like, okay this is going to take me 6 months. Then go get your Todd hat, put your Todd hat on, and think what would Todd do? And Todd would be like, “I wouldn’t do it that way. I would just shortcut here, here, and here and get it done in 2 days as opposed to 6 months.”

So that’s the joke. Put your Todd hat on before you come back. That’s good, now put your Todd hat on and re-evaluate and come back with a shorter timeline right. So I’m thinking about that now and it’s like, I just basically put my Todd hat on right, to shortcut these modules and things I’m doing that weren’t realistic for me to get done in time. And now it’s like, I just bought myself a week, I’m moving forward quickly now. And it’s exciting.

So I want you to start looking at your projects that way, and a lot of times there’s shortcut. A lot of times there’s a way you could do something faster. You could be licensing someone’s product, you hiring somebody. It could be like a million different things, but what’s the shortcut you can do today that gets you there faster? Put your Todd hat on and figure out how to get the shortcut.

So I wanted to share that today because by putting my Todd hat on today I saved myself at least a weeks worth of work, made the product better, and everyone’s happy. The person I licensed the product from is ecstatic, they got a ton of money, and they’re going to get all this credibility because they’re in our product. I got to save myself time and effort. Our customers are going to win because they got a better product when all is said and done. And it’ll all get done faster because I looked for the shortcut.

So there you go, there’s the thought for today I wanted to drop on you guys as you’re doing your projects and figuring out what is the shortcut. Putting your Todd hat on and figuring out the shortcut. With that said, thank you guys so much for everything and hopefully you’re moving forward on your projects and getting back to changing the world in your own little way. And with that said, I will talk to you guys all soon. Bye everybody.

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