The Russell Brunson Show

If you want to stop playing checkers and start playing chess, listen to today’s episode. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Good morning everybody. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today I want to talk about something interesting, about when you have a success and you have a win, how to take that and roll it on to geometrically grow everything else you did inside your business. So I hope you guys are awesome today. It's been snowing here in Boise, and then today it's been raining so it's all slushy, and I've had fun driving kids to school this morning. This is one of my favorite things, is to drive them and have a chance to talk to them. It makes me sad because my twins are about to get their licenses and then I'll probably not get to drive them anymore. But until they do, I'm enjoying it and it's just really fun. Just dropped off Aiden, my little man, at school and have a few minutes while I'm heading back to the office. And I was thinking about something that I thought would be helpful for all of you guys, because I don't see this happen enough. In fact, I noticed with a lot of us entrepreneurs, we do something that works really good and then we move on to the next thing as opposed to being like, "Hey, that worked really good. We should do more of that, or we should focus on that, or we should go deeper on that." A good example just happened recently. As you guys know, I bought Dan Kennedy's company and then we relaunched it last month. The relaunch went really, really well. And the way we launched it is we took ... it was a concept that Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer did back 15, 18, I don't know how many years ago, when Bill first bought the company. The company's basically a newsletter company, it had the Magnetic Marketing newsletter. And so when Bill bought it, he was like, "I want to grow this" so he created something that he called the MIFGE. I talked about it on the podcast before, stands for Most Incredible Free Gift Ever. And they launched it and that's how the newsletter grew originally. And then they sold the company to private equity firms, who as a rule are not very good at actually marketing the way that we all market. And they ran the business to the ground over the next decade. So I had a chance to buy it out of that. And the first thing I did is, well, what worked in the past? Oh, the MIFGE, we should remake the MIFGE. So we built the MIFGE, we launched it, and from the MIFGE we added over 4000 new paying members into the newsletter. So I want to do the math on that for you, because it makes this really interesting. And obviously people are going to cancel, but let's just say they don't. So we added 4000 people at $97 a month. That's $400,000 a month, times 12 months in a year, that's an extra 4.8 million dollar-a-year business we launched in a weekend by creating a really good MIFGE offer. That's awesome. And again, like I said, there's going to be a churn and things are going to drop, we're also going to start buying ads to it. The funnel converted extremely well. I think I talked about that, if not... Hopefully you signed up through the funnel and you got the first January's newsletter because I break down the funnel. But we're averaging 200 and something dollars for every free trial. So I can spend $200 to get a free trial and still be profitable, which is insane. And now it's making that business where we can start growing it and scaling it, and I think by summertime I could have 10,000 members in there, pay $97 a month which is a million dollar-a-month business on info product, a newsletter. It's insane. And so for me, I am the worst at keeping secrets, that's why all my books are called DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets, because I just tell everyone my secrets. And on the podcast I shared this, in the first issue of the newsletter I'm sharing it. I'm not good at keeping secrets. But it's interesting because I'll share that with most people and like, "oh that's so cool, that's awesome." And then they don't do anything with it. I have somebody who I love and respect who I shared it with, probably one of the first people I shared it with, and I thought they were going to grab it and take it. And then I saw their next offer run out and they could have done the model that I did with the offer they did. It would've fit. It would've been a simple tweak to make it match that, and then they didn't. And they launched something and they didn't follow the model and I was like, "man, if somebody told me that they had a funnel that was averaging 200 and ... $230, it might have been ... Anyway, insane EPC, average cart value. It isn't my market, it's something similar. I would look at that, I would've funnel hacked it and I would've called an audible before I launched my funnel and made tweaks and changes based on it. But they didn't, they just said, "oh wow, that's amazing, that's so cool." And then they went on. And I'm sure a lot of you guys heard me talk about it and you're like, "oh, that's so cool" and then you went on. The way to leverage this stuff, to leverage my wins, to leverage your wins, to leverage what's working in the market is to not do that. So for example, we launched the MIFGE offer, it killed it. We had an urgency and scarcity where it closed down for two weeks or something like that. I think it just went back live a day or two ago. If you go to noBSletter.com, you can see the funnel. But after we shut it down, the first question was "man, that works really good. We should create a MIFGE for ClickFunnels." That was the first thing. "It worked here, let's do it again." Where most people are like "That worked awesome", and then they move on to the next thing and they forget about the success. So we sat down and said, "how would we make a MIFGE for ClickFunnels? What would that look like? How do we make it so the offers are irresistible, so it gets people to stick longer? So it gets our average cart value up front higher?" Right now, for me to get a ClickFunnels trial, just so you guys know, in paid media, for my paid ads, it costs me $300. Between 250 and $300, depending on a lot of things, to get somebody to sign up for free ClickFunnels trial. Which is fine because our lifetime value of a customer is really, really high so we can do it. But it's a float. It takes me three to four months. And honestly longer than that, because you have churn and breakage and all that kind of stuff. It takes a good almost a year to break even from me buying to get someone to sign up for a ClickFunnels trial, which is fine. But if I could tweak my front end funnel so that I was making 250, $300 for every trial we signed up, now I break even immediately and now guess what? I can out-scale everybody once again. And so I'm like, "how do I do that?" Well, we need a ClickFunnels MIFGE offer. And so that's what we did. We spent three hours, in a room, "how do we make a ClickFunnels most incredible free gift ever?" That's what MIFGE stands for. Most Incredible Free Gift Ever. And we structured it, we sat down and we mapped it out, and we're like, "now we have this, what's the hook? What's the story? Why are we doing this? What's the offer? What do we send them in the mail so we can get the physical address? How do we build community? How do we build culture? How do we weave all that stuff into an incredible offer?" And when it was done, we literally mapped it out. And I sat there and I was like, "oh my gosh, this will change ClickFunnels forever." And it's so simple. It's nothing complicated. All of us make good offers. We sell something. But looking at it through the lens of the most incredible free gift ever, and then looking at the funnel we built for the Dan Kennedy company and how high the average cart value and how high the EPCs were, how high everything was. It's like, okay, let's take this model and let's replicate it over here. And so for you guys, I just want you to understand when I share something, I'm excited and I'm ... it's not like, "oh cool, Russell. That's awesome." It should be like, "okay, how do I implement this in my business?" That'd be the first question I'd be asking myself instantly, is how do I take this and do it, because it's awesome? I want to put that out there, because I see a lot of people who don't do those kind of things. Like when we launched the Traffic Secrets book funnel, it was the highest converting book funnel I'd done to date. It was awesome. And so instead of being like, "man, that's awesome. The Traffic Secrets book funnel's great." I said, "okay, what did we learn on this? What was the layout? The style, design, the tweak… like what did we do different in this one than the other ones?" We took those things and we moved them and we took all those best practices, all things we figured out. And we did them on the other book funnels. We went backwards in time. Now all the book funnels match the model and they're all converting high. And right now we're in the process of re-tweaking with the book funnels to try to increase the cart value. And we're trying things and tweaking things and testing things. As soon as we get it to work, then guess what we're going to do instantly? Take those changes and roll them across all the book funnels. So I want you guys to understand that's how you double down on these things, how you get consistently better. Geometrically better, not just incrementally. A lot of people have incremental wins. They add this thing, they get a little better, add this thing, they get a little bit better. Whereas I'm looking at geometry, how do we geometrically grow what we're doing? Because I don't want to go from $150 million to $170 million. That's not inspiring or exciting or anything. I want to go from $150 million to $300 million. How do you do that? You don't do it by playing checkers. You do it by playing chess. Geometrically thinking differently, strategically. When you have a win, you got to compound that win upon the other win as opposed to just "oh, we had a win. Cool." And the moving on to the next thing. Everything needs to compound and increase and get better and get better. But to do that, it takes you becoming passionate about this. I've talked about this a lot over the years. You got to become more passionate about the marketing of your thing than you do about the thing. All of us have the thing that we're selling, that we're in love with, the reason why we got in this business. But if you really love that thing, whatever your product, your service, your message is. If you really love that, you have to become obsessed with the selling of that thing. One of the biggest mistakes I see influencers and people do is that they love their thing. They're having success and they want to go hire a funnel builder. They want to outsource it to somebody else. They want to ... "who do I hire to become a marketing team? Who can I outsource this to?" And it's like, "ah, you're missing it. That's the best part, to figure out how to get your thing into people's hands." If you become obsessed with that part of it, that's how you really grow and scale and dramatically grow your companies. So for all you guys who are listening, I wanted to look at that lens of number one, when I'm dropping gold, when I'm dropping like, "this funnel's killing it." Funnel hack it, look at it. And then look at your old funnels. "How do I weave this model in?" That's number one. Number two, same thing for yourself. When you have a win, don't just be like "cool. That was awesome." Go back and roll that win across everything else so you can geometrically grow everything you're doing. And number three, become obsessed with this game. Again, the ones who are winning at the highest level are the ones who obsess. They keep going into this and keep figuring things out and they have so much fun with it. And then they layer it on and they do the next thing and the next thing, and that's when you can really have fun and enjoy this. So I hope that helps. I hope that gets your mind thinking a little bit differently. If it does, and you enjoyed this, then please let me know. All right. Thanks you guys for listening, I appreciate you. Thanks for listening to this podcast. And by the way, if you haven't heard yet, with the launch of Danny Kennedy's company, we launched the Magnetic Marketing Podcast, which is basically, I found tons of old Danny Kennedy presentations from the last 20 years or so. Him speaking at info summits, him on the gold and the diamond CDs and all these things that were lost in the archives. I started going through them. I'm like, "these are amazing. I don't know how to sell these. 'Here's a CD interview of Dan talking for an hour about wealth creation or whatever'." It's amazing, but it's not a product, really. I was like, "what do I do with these things?" And so I decided to give them to you guys for free. And so we created a podcast called the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. And if you go to MagneticMarketingPodcast.com, you can subscribe to it there. And then you get hardcore raw Dan Kennedy interviews and audios once a week, which are ... they're really, really good. So I recommend doing that and diving into Danny. I love him. He's a little ornery, but man, he's brilliant. So anyway, there you go. There's an old Magnetic Marketing Podcast that the old company had ran, which was a bunch of people talking about Dan, which I did not love. And so if you search in the podcast search engine, you might find the old one. If you go to MagneticMarketingPodcast.com, that's the right one. And you'll know because there's a cool picture of Dan Kennedy in black and white, and looks amazing. He looks like the tough guy that he is. So anyway, that said, thanks, you guys so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed this podcast, hope you enjoy Dan's podcast as well, and I will talk to you soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The skill set for building an effective team is WAY different than the skills needed for marketing and sales. For one, you have to learn how to become a true LEADER. So the two key questions to ask yourself are 1. Who do you have to become to lead a great team? And 2. What are the critical strategies you need to implement to get your team onboard to follow your vision? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everyone? This is Russell, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about building a team. How do you do it? What are the pitfalls? What are the pros, the cons? And some of the things that I learned along the way. Hopefully this'll help you as you're building out your team to be able to do whatever it is you're trying to do in your life. Whatever your mission, whatever your goal, whatever the business you're trying to build. I hope that this episode will help you as you're thinking through it, to help you to build the team that's going to get you to the finish line. So with that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song. We come back, you have a chance to listen in on a cool interview, talking about how to build your team. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast, I'm here today with Josh Forti and we've been having fun today. The last two episodes- Josh Forti: We have. Russell: We recorded went longer, but- Josh: It's been fun. Russell: I think they've been fun. So today will be a little bit shorter episode, but it's something that, again, Josh brings things that I don't ever really typically talk about. So it's been fun to talk about some of the stuff like I think about, but I've never really verbally shared. So do you want to set up what we were talking about today? Josh: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so very specifically here, I want to focus for you specifically. The question is, well, leadership and team building, what are some of the biggest shifts around building a team and becoming a leader? Because as someone who built a team myself that failed miserably, it wasn't that we hated each other, but it's just like, it was chaos. When you're trying to manage like six or seven different people and they're all like contracting everywhere. And now I'm like kind of going back and rebuilding. And I'm building it right and I have full-time people that we're bringing in and going. And it's like, man, the skillset of making money, the skillset of being a marketer is way so totally different- Russell: Yeah. Josh: Than building a team. And even being like the attractive character and building a following, like building a following is a completely different skillset than it is of growing a team and being a leader and things like that. And so I guess like two part is number one, who did you have to become? And like, secondly, what are like some of the hacks, tips, or I know you like secrets. So what are some of the secrets that you use to build a team and really like sell them on the vision and like really make sure that they were thriving in that role? Russell: Cool. So I want to just second what you said, building a team is way different than all the other things. And I've struggled over the years. I have an amazing team, as you guys know, if you've seen everything. And I wouldn't say most of it's because of my own doing, I'll talk about some of the stuff I've learned along the way. But it's a different skillset. And I think making money is an easier skill, I think creating a movement of people that are following you is different. I always tell people, like I'm such a good leader and communicator to like my tribe and I'm not as good to my internal team. It's interesting. And so a couple things that I'll share again, I don't have this perfect. And if you ask people on my team, like Russell's not perfect at this because I'm not. But I'll share some of the things I've learned because I'm always trying to figure this out and trying to get better at it. One of the biggest lessons I had and I did a podcast on this probably two or three years ago. Was this realization that I had to make a transition. Because I was always like the All Star. Like if you look at basketball, like I was the All Star, like I was really good. I could write copy, I could build a funnel, I could drive traffic, I could sell from stage, I could do all the different things. And so I was like, Michael Jordan out there and I'd be on stage, I'd be doing, I'd be dunking and slamming and three points. And like just amazing and people would tell me how great I was and I loved it. And then I start building a team. And so I started building a team, but the problem is that as I was building a team, I still thought I was Michael Jordan. So I'd build the team and I'd be in there, all of a sudden, I'd have the person writing copy and they'd be going up with the ball, about to do the layup. And I'm like, "Ah, I could actually do it better." So I grab the ball from my own teammate and rip it out of their hands and I'd go dunk it like, "Ah." And I would get everyone cheering for me again. Or someone would be coming down ... I'm trying to get these analogies working. But basically what's happening is that I was the All Star and- Josh: That one worked. That analogy worked. Russell: That one did work? Okay, good. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I was trying to bring in other All Stars. But the problem is I'd bring these All Stars in and then as they were trying to perform, I'd be like, "I can do it better." And I would take the ball from them because I want to be the All Star. And I had this realization, like for me to actually build a team, I cannot continue to be the All Star. And this is hard- Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: For achievers like us, especially for someone like me. Like I was the achiever, I had done all the roles because I had built the company by myself initially. It was me doing all the roles, so I learned all the roles, I got good at all the roles. And so as I started trying to like bring on these different All Stars, it was tough. It's kind of like if you watch the All Star game or like the dream team. Like all of a sudden you got like the best players on a team and usually they're not the best playing with each other because they're all the All Stars, they all want a ball hog and it gets really, really difficult. And so I had to make this realization, like if I'm going to be successful growing a team and getting click funnels from hundred million to a billion dollars, like I can't continue to be the All Star. I have to retire and I have to become the coach. That's a hard transition. Because now you're coming back and like you're successful, not now by your skillset, but you're successful by like cultivating other people's skillsets. And that's a different skillset to have, by the way. Like it's way harder. For me, it's always been easier for me to go and like to do the thing. Like I'm finding it now with I'm coaching my kids wrestling. And I'm watching my kids, I'm watching the team and like, man, I was such a good athlete. I'd go out there, I'd kill myself, I'd work so hard and I was an amazing athlete. But it's way harder for me to coach other athletes because I can't give them desire, I can't give them these different things. And so that was difficult. And so that's the first thing to realize is that if you're going to start growing a team, you have to be willing to like take your Jersey off and say, "I'm no longer the All Star, I am now the coach. And I've got new people." And that's been the hardest thing for me and I still struggle with that, I still like jump back in. I'm like, "Ah." But that's the key, if you want to get a good group people around you. Because otherwise if you're the one that's taking the ball from him, from the other people on the team, the All Stars are going to leave you. Like they're not going to stick around, they want to be the All Star too, they want the recognition, they want to be doing the thing. So that's the first big shift that you got to have. Any questions on that before I go to kind of- Josh: No, no. Super good. Yeah, you're good. Russell: Okay. So the second thing is you have to be good at hiring All Stars. I remember when we first started building ClickFunnels, Todd read an article or something and he was talking about ... in the article was like, there's A players, B players, C player, there's different levels. But what people don't understand, it's not like A players, like 100% and B players like 50%. Like the article said the difference between an A player and a B player is like 2200% difference. So it's like a B player, you can have like one A player going to give you the output of like 50 or 100 or how many B players. And so what most of us try to do, is try to come in and say, "Okay, I don't want to spend as much money getting the right person. So I'm going to find somebody who's cheaper. Maybe they're not going to be an A player, but they'll be a B player, but I can afford them." And that's like this mindset that most people have. I see it all the time, I see it in Facebook groups, in ClickFunnels Facebook group, like, how do I get a cheap funnel builder? Like, that's the problem, you're looking for a B player. Or you find an A player, you get 2200 times better thing. And so it's been interesting because we launched ClickFunnels the first time, like I had a couple A players, which is why it grew. We had a couple All Stars, we had some like Todd Dickerson. You guys know our team, like we had A players who were able to go and intergrow. But then from there, we had to hire whoever we could afford. Right now we're building ClickFunnels 2.0 and we're in a unique spot where it's like, we don't have to just hire who we can afford. Like let's hire the best. And so we're going out there trying to figure out who are the A players in each regard. And it's crazy because I look at the team that's building ClickFunnels 2.0, it's a small team. What they're accomplishing is amazing, but they're all A players. When we started like looking at rolling out Click Funnels 2.0 and our marketing team, we started trying to bring in A players and they're expensive. And so a lot of times the questions like, well, I don't have any money. How do I recruit the A players? Well, I recruited Todd and I was broke. A players aren't necessarily looking for money today. The A players are people who are looking for money in the future. They're the ones who are like, "I want to be part of a team. I want to build something cool, something I believe in. And I want to be able to get paid insane amounts of money over here. And I'm willing to give up that for this over here." The right people will be willing to do that. So as I come back, if I was to like be building my team over from scratch right now. There's number one, again, taking off the All Star, say I'm going to be the coach. And number two is like, if I'm going to be the coach and I'm out there building the team, like I'm going to try to build the dream team. And to do that, I've got to sell them on the vision of why this is cool and like where it's going to go, and what's the opportunity for them. Because just like you're trying to sell your customers on the opportunity of like funnels are the opportunity or whatever. It's like, you're selling your dreams team, like this is the opportunity. Like if you join the team, you're going to get paid nothing right now or very little right now. But this is how we're going to structure things so that it'll be worth it for you over here. And the right people will hear that because that's what they're looking for. Someday when I retire from this whole, whatever I'm doing. If I was ever getting a job again, it's not going to be based on money, I could care less about money. Someone's going to sell me someday on the vision. In fact, I just saw Sean Wayland just hired the dude who started Tapout- Josh: Yeah, I saw that. Russell: And like how powerful is that? The Tapout dude does not need Sean's money. He sold his company for insane amounts of money. But I'm sure Sean's like, "Hey dude, here's the opportunity. You help me do this thing and flip it like, this is what's possible for you." And now he's got literally like there's no better person that Sean could have hired to run that company- Josh: Yeah, I know. Russell: Than this dude. Josh: When I saw that one, I was like, "Oh my Gosh." Russell: It's brilliant. So for all of us, we got to start linking more strategically. Not like, who can I afford for this role? It's like, who is the person that's going to be getting a million bucks a year in five years from now in this role? And how do I sell them on the opportunity? How do I create an opportunity where they can grow and they can monetize? Where they can make this kind of money. And that's how you recruit the right people into your world, who are going to help you to actually have success. And so those are the things ... because you get a good A player, you don't have to be really good at managing, you don't have to be really good at micro- Josh: Yeah. Russell: All those kind things. Like you get the right people in place, they're going to do the things and it makes you look like the All Star, the coach of the year that you are. Because you built the right team. Building the team- Josh: Yeah. Russell: Is more valuable than all the other pieces, I believe. Josh: Yeah. Like getting the right people is more important. The systems, the process, like those are all important. But like if you have B players on the team, it's like you're going to get a mediocre result. Russell: Yeah. And then- Josh: Yeah. Russell: And B player, you're going to be one in charge if you know the process. We brought Todd and I didn't have to like sit down with Todd and like, "Okay, how are we going to manage the projects? How are we going to do this?" Like Todd came in, he's like, "All right, I got it." And he just ran and he was able to run and like, all right, he's done. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Like we just brought in this guy named Kevin Richards, who we brought him in into like be the CMO of ClickFunnels. And Kevin had worked for a whole bunch of really big companies doing this. And it's crazy because like he came in and we gave him the reins, he started running. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is way better than I was running." Like there's structures, organization. Because he's done it before, over and over and over again. He's going to come in and plug in and just do it. And I'm watching it right now, I'm like- Josh: Yeah. Russell: "Man, like he's an A player who I could hire." In fact, I have over the last decade, a whole bunch of B players to do this role and no one's been able to hit it. And it's been me being involved so much. Where now it's like literally the first two weeks I was like all nervous because I want to make sure that everything's perfect. And finally like gave him the reins and I stepped back and it's like, "Whoa, this is so much better than when I was running it." Josh: Yeah. Russell: And it's easier and less stressed on me and he's loving it and it's just powerful. So those are the key. Josh: Okay. Couple rapid fire questions here, so that we make time. Number one, have you ever run into challenges or how have you dealt with communication differences inside of a team? Because one of the things that I've noticed is like, I just thought everybody would communicate like I was if we're all part of a team. I'm like the most expressive person, like when I talk. Like I use emojis and exclamation points and like if I'm texting, if I'm going like my voice or whatever. And like someone on my team is like, "Okay." I'm like, "Ah, are you mad? Do you understand? Like what do you mean, okay?" Do you have systems in place? Or do you typically go and just try to like find people to do that? Or is that something you just learn? Because I'm sure like, Melanie, I mean she was with you for how long? Right before Shelia, I'm sure she had a very unique communication style and I'm sure your next assistant is probably not the same as her. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right. So like how have you learned like how to deal with that? Russell: Yeah. A couple things. One is like personality profiling is huge. In fact, we're working on a whole project right now and that'll probably be a book and a membership side, bunch of stuff, all based on personality profiling. Because that's how you understand like what motivates people? How do they speak? How do they not speak? How do they understand? Because again, Melanie and Jenny are very different people. But I'm able to work with both of them because I understood their personality types, I understood like, what are the things that would light Melanie up? What are the things that'd get Jenny excited to work? And vice versa. Like, if you look at Melanie was a very high S, so very faithful. And so like she would like die for you to be able to get something done. Jenny on their hand has very low S, almost no S. And so for her, it's like, man, if she gets bored, she's gone. So I got to make sure that she's got 8,000 projects and she's juggling them all. The more things she's having, the more successful she's going to be. Similar to me. And so I give her tons of projects and she thrives that she's able to juggle all these things. Whereas if I treat her like I taught Melanie, she would've been here for a week and a half, like, I'm out, like this is horrible. So understanding those kind of things. Like DISC profile's big, Meyers Briggs is big. Those are my two favorites. I'm trying to learn to master all the other ones, but those ones help a ton when you're hiring and all also when you're managing people. Josh: Yeah. Russell: The other thing is, this is one that helped me. Actually, Julie Story actually was one that taught it to me initially. And I don't remember all the things, but there's these different hats. There's like a black hat and a green hat and a red hat and yellow hat and all these things like that. So I'm a very green hat person, so are you. Put on the green hat and it's like creative ideas and we're flowing. I'm like, we get so excited about sharing stuff. And there's people who have like a black hats, they're the ones who always like ... they look at what could go wrong. What about this? And what about this? Josh: They take away all the fun. Oh my God. Russell: Yeah. Josh: They ruin it. Russell: And then like the white hats. So there's all these different hats. The ones I really remember is like green and black because I'm green hat. And like, Jamie Smith's a good example of a black hat. I love Jamie, one of my favorite humans in the world. But when we would do meetings together, I literally wanted jump over the table and strangle him. Because I'm like, "I did, I did, I did." And he's like, "Well, you think about this? You think about this? Think about this?" And like you're sucking the life out of me. Josh: Yeah. Russell: My wife's a very black hat person, as well. I'm like, "We should take the kids and like fly around the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Like just brainstorming things that are probably never going to happen. She's like, "What about this, this, this?" And so we started learning like based on this ... this is something that Julie brought that was really powerful. It was like, "Hey, we're in now in a green hat phase. Well, Russell's going to green hat, we're talking about ideas. No one's allowed to black hat this at all. Let's just share ideas." So then everyone's just sharing ideas and like, we have a chance to be excited and creative and get these things out there. And after it's like all the creative steps out, it's like, "Okay, now let's put a black hat on, now it's black hat this." And now we can all look at it objectively you're like, "Okay, we're going to black hat this and go through the black hat things." And then we put on a different colored hat and go through those things. Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: And we go through different hats, but they're separately, they're not all happening at the same time. Because if it happens at the same time, it destroys my creativity and excitement and energy. I want to like strangle the person. But like, man, I need those people. I need Jamie to look at this and be like, "Here's 40 ways why this isn't going to work." Like, oh crap, I didn't think about that, that or that. We stack the different hats as opposed to doing them all at the same time and making us all want to kill each other. And that has been- Josh: That's so helpful. Russell: Huge for us. Like for me, it's huge. I always tell people like when I start brainstorming, like, "Okay, green hat time, no negative, no what ifs. Let's go." And then we just do that. And you see like the black hat people are like twitching and they're like, don't worry, you’re going to get your shot, but not yet. Until everything's out and it's like, "Okay, black hat's on. What do you guys got?" And then they can go do their thing. Josh: You need some anxiety medication over there. Russell: Yeah. We can do a whole, like two day training on that, too. Because it's such a powerful thing. But conceptually, it's breaking those things in that way. Josh: All right, Russell. Well, in your other life, we'll just have an entire podcast where all we do is just do deep dives all day long. But in this life, we have to stick with constraints of where we're at. So anyway, thank you for sharing that. Super, super helpful. I appreciate it. Russell: No worries. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. As you guys are building your teams, remember the principles we talked about. You've got to become the coach, you've got to attract A players, you got to put them in the right spots, figure out ways to make it profitable for them in the long term, figure out personality types, you can serve them the right way. Black hat, green hat, red hats. We should do an episode on just on all hat ... I have to go back to remember all the other colored hats. But anyway- Josh: All right, our next- Russell: There you go. Josh: Go around, I'll be like you have homework for this. Russell: Russell, prepare for this and we'll go. Josh: Prepare for this one. That'd be awesome. Russell: That'd be awesome. Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Josh. And we'll see you guys on the next episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know this may be holding you back from success in your business? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. One of the questions I get asked a lot about, and I don't spend a lot of time talking about it, is actually money and mindset around money, and how that works, and things that can help you to make more money, things that hold you back from making money. They have nothing to do with your skill set, it just has everything to do with the conversations, the beliefs, the things inside of your mind. This interview with Josh Forti, it was really fun and hopefully you enjoy it. Hopefully it'll help you if you do have money blocks, to help you get unstuck. If you don't think you have money blocks, you probably do. And this hopefully, interview, will make you very aware of those things, and help you to find those things and knock them out in your life. That said, we'll keep the theme song, and when we come back, listen in on this interview with me and Josh Forti. What's up everybody? Welcome back The Marketing Secrets podcast. I'm here today again with Josh Forti, and we're having so much fun today. We just recorded one episode and now we're going deep into episode number two, which we're going to be talking about mindset as it relates to things that are very specific to you guys as entrepreneurs. I'll Josh talk more about this as he's going to be queuing up the question, but hope you guys enjoy this episode as well. Josh Forti: All right, man. First off, we got to talk about your shirt. I feel like there's got to be a story behind this. Guys, for those of you that are listening on audio, let me just explain real quick. It is a skull and crossbones, but it's not just a skull and crossbones. It's got bunny ears on the skull. It's got little waves off to the side. What does it say on the sleeve? Russell: It says, "Psycho bunny." Josh: Psycho bunny. Russell: This is actually a really cool brand called Psycho Bunny, and I bought a couple of their things. I'm like, "This is a cool brand." And then I was shopping with Bart Miller in Vegas, and they have a Psycho Bunny shop. I went in there- Josh: Oh dang! Russell: And they had shirts and jackets and suit jackets that have the Psycho Bunny inside. It's just a fun, cool brand, and I really like it. Psycho Bunny. Josh: Okay. There's no grand, huge story behind how you got it. You just liked it. Russell: I should buy the company because it'd be really cool. Anyway, nope. Nothing. Josh: Guys, when you're a funnel hacker and when you decide to take over the world and create empires, you can randomly decide on a podcast that you're just going to ... "I should buy the company." That's not a normal thing that most people get to say, but it's super dope. Russell: This could be a fun episode in the future because as we acquired two big companies last year and I'm learning about this and having more fun with it, there are some cool ... For most of us, we look at a company, like, "There's no way I could buy that company," but then like Tai Lopez who just bought RadioShack and he bought Pier 1 Imports and all these companies… Josh: Dress Barn. Yeah. Russell: Now, I bought a couple companies and I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's actually a really cool strategy where it doesn't technically cost you any money if you do it correctly. We bought Dan Kennedy's company for a steal. We've launched the first thing. Now we made our money back. And now moving forward, everything I do with Dan Kennedy's company is pure, unadulterated profit to the bottom line. And that's exciting because ... All of a sudden it's like, you can actually buy companies when you understand the core principles of what we do. Anyway, that's a topic for another day, but it's kind of a fun one. Josh: So much fun stuff. Topic for another day. We'll do many episodes. Now is not the time. We're going to dive into what I think goes really well with our last episode. Last episode we talked about goal setting and setting things up, and that last bit of it was around identity and beliefs and values and rules and things like that. I want to talk about mindset here, and specifically the mindset ... There's a couple core key areas, because what's interesting is a lot of times we think mindset is we have to train our minds to think a certain way, or we have to overcome false beliefs about bad things. Like, "I'll never be successful" or "I'll never be this." But it goes both ways, because often times we can have fear of success. We can have fear that, oh, my gosh, what happens if I actually achieve that goal? There's so many different things around that, that we could dive into, but I want to kick off with this one specifically around mindset around money. I do want to talk about not just money, failure, doing the impossible, things like that, but I want to start with money because I feel like money is one of these things that we all have some form of weird relationship with it. Very few people grew up in a home where their parents and everybody around them had a healthy relationship with money, because most people ... I would say 90 plus percent of the people that I've met do not have a healthy relationship with money. They don't understand it. They don't understand what it represents, how it works, any of the things with it. For you, I want you to take us back because one of things, and I've kind of told you this at the beginning, a lot of people in the ClickFunnels world, like Russell. I was talking to Brad Gibb the other day. Shout out to Brad. He's awesome. He's like, "Russell has come and he's taken these handcuffs off of us, to where now we just can print money." It's ridiculous. It's kind of a cheat code. When we talk about it to all of our friends, we go around and we're like, "Yeah, we just kind of make money on the Internet." They're like, "How do you do that?" We're like, "We don't know. We just do what Russell says and it just works." Russell: It’s a magic trick! Josh: It just shows up. It's amazing. We've kind of unshackled the making of money, if we follow what it is, but keeping money. But our thoughts around money, our beliefs around money, how we perceive and value money, how we think money is going to change us. All of these different other things around money, those things are now new problems that a lot of us are running into, or have not yet applied the things that you've told us to do because of those beliefs. I think both of those are true. I've seen so many people ... I made not a ton, ton of money, but certainly 10 times more money than I'd ever made in my life when I first got started, and blew it all because of my poor, very unhealthy, almost toxic relationship with money. Take us back, what are the money shifts or the beliefs around money, specifically in mindset, that you had to go through. I'm just going to kind of leave that open ended and see where you take it. Russell: The first thing I think that would be useful for everyone is for everyone to actually, honestly sit down and look at their relationship with money and understand it ... It's funny because if you would ask Russell 15 years ago Russell if this was actually a real thing, I'd be like, "No, this is stupid. Just make money. It's easy." But I had a friend who I worked with, man, probably 12, 13 years ago on a project and he was someone who is super charismatic, super dynamic, super talented person. When he was younger, he used his talents and his gifts and he made a whole bunch of money really, really fast. Crazy, crazy money. Money that doesn't make any sense. When he got that money, he started doing stupid things with it. He got into drugs and alcohol and all the problems that are associated with when you make too much money too fast as a kid, and almost destroyed his life. He almost died. He almost lost his family and his marriage. All these things happened. He lost all the money, which was probably a blessing. And then he refixed his life. And then he got back to the spot where he's like, "I want to make money again." I watched him for probably 10 years of his life, where he would do all the right things, he would get close to making a bunch of money and then he would literally subconsciously destroy everything he had built, and it kept happening. At first I was so confused by it. I'm like, "You were so close. How do you keep messing this up? I don't understand it." Then he told me a story. He didn't know this subconsciously but we had a conversation one night where he told me a story. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Subconsciously, you are linking the destruction of your family, your health and all these things to making money, because that's what happened the very first time. Now every time you get close to it, your whole subconscious mind is like, no, and starts making you do stupid things to destroy yourself from actually having success." I've seen ... Now, it's been a decade of me watching this. And as much as I love this person, I keep seeing him. He's so talented, so many gifts, and keeps not having any success because of this thing that happened in his youth. His is an extreme example, but this is happening to all of us. You think about when you were growing up, what are the things that your parents said about money? What are the things that you heard at church about money? What are the things you heard in different spots? There are so many things that have been ingrained in our head that we don't even know consciously. And also, we start having success in whatever. We start making money or we start getting close to making money, and all these warning signals are popping off in your head, like, don't get money because of this because you'll become a bad person and you're going to fall away from God. You're going to be doing this. You're going to be the bad person. You look at TV. Myron Golden is the first one that ever pointed this out to me. You look at every movie, every superhero movie, for the most part, the bad guy is the rich billionaire who is this horrible person. This is ingrained in our heads that money is going to make us evil. Those things are real, and even if you don't think that they're affecting you, they probably are. Josh: And then you don't consciously believe it. Subconsciously they control you. Russell: Yeah, it's affecting you. I've seen this in my own journey. When I first started making money, I thought everyone was going to be excited. I was like, "This is so cool." I was so excited to teach everybody else. I started making money. I start teaching people and try to show my friends and my family and what happened. The response I got was not what I thought it was going to be. It was not like, "This is amazing-" Josh: At all. Russell: "Let's try it." Instead it was weird, especially for my wife. My wife struggled with it even more so than me because I've had success in parts of my life in the past where ... In wrestling, I was a state champ, I was an all-American. I hit these different things, but there was this weird side of success you aren't expecting where the people around you who you think are going to be celebrating with you, they don't. In fact, I remember my mom when I bought my dream house ... My house is ... You've been to my house. Josh: Your house is insane. It's so awesome. Russell: It’s like the coolest thing in the world. When I was growing up, I wanted an insane house. I remember I was finally at a spot where I could buy this house. In the reality, I didn't pay it off immediately. I could've just paid cash for it. I didn't. But within two years I think I paid it off, which was a big deal for me. But I remember when I was buying my house, I remember a comment my mom said. She was like, "You don't want to buy a house like this because then you're going to be one of those rich people up on the hill." I was like, "What does that mean, mom?" She was like, "They're the ones that are always looking down at everybody else." I'm like, "What?" All of a sudden I was scared to tell my mom about my success because my mom viewed the rich people as this thing over here. And then other people. It was this weird thing where all of a sudden it makes you want to shrink down, it makes you want to hide because you're like, "I don't want people judging me because of this thing." For all of you guys, for all of us, there's these things that may happen, where comments are made, when people we love and respect were to all of a sudden to ... The side of success that you think is going to happen doesn't. Especially in money. I think money is a big one because it's such a thing. Josh: Yeah. I also think that because of the stories that we're told by everybody else, like you're saying, subconsciously it's ingrained in our society, what money is and how it works, nobody understands it. Taylor Welch ... You know Taylor, right? Taylor Welch? Russell: Yep. Josh: He's the one ... He and I have become ... I don't want to say good friends, but certainly friends over the past little bit. He was actually the very first person I ever interviewed on my podcast. Russell: Very cool. Josh: He got me into money. He was like, "Study money. Because once you understand how it works, it'll completely change your perspective of it." I always joke around with my mom. I'm like, "Money's not real. It's all fake." In America specifically, the U.S. dollar is not real. It's all fake and it's all made up. She always pushes back. She's like, "It's not fake because I can guy groceries with it." I'm like, "That right there, that shows that I have a different relationship ..." And side note, I freaking love my mom. My mom and I have an amazing relationship. But my mom and I have a completely different fundamental relationship with money. That was a very interesting learning lesson for me. When you change your relationship with money, when you change how it works, when you understand it differently and when you change your relationship with it, it also becomes not hard to get or keep, because now you're not needy of it. Your relationship changes with it. I always think about ... Take it back to dating. I'm not even going to say the book because I don't want people to go ... It's not a great book, but I was reading a clip out of this book one time and the guy in it goes, "Money and ..." Let's say, relationship. Money and girls are kind of the same thing. Those are not the words he used, but money and girls are the same way. If you're desperate and needy of it, you'll never have it. But if you don't care, it'll come abundantly. That was a very interesting shift for me as well. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you but that was very interesting. Russell: It's key. As I studied Tony Robbins, the biggest thing I learned ... One of the biggest things. I shouldn't say the biggest, but is just becoming aware of things. I think the first step for of any us is being aware of how this is actually affecting you. For a lot of us, at whatever level you're at, the reason you're not at the next level is because there's some belief around it that's keeping you from there. It's interesting, I remember when I had the goal, when I hit a million dollars in a year, I didn't hit it three years in a row. Every year I was within $50,000. Like, $75,000. How am I not hitting this? It was like, I had these weird beliefs around that thing. As soon as I broke it, I was like, this is easy. Going from million to 10 million was next. Getting to two, three, five, eight million was easy, but then 10 million was this gap where I was stuck. It's beliefs. What's easy? What's hard? A couple things ... Again, this is one of those topics. I've never taught this before so I don't have the, here's the Russell three step framework. Things have happened in my life that I became aware of this for myself. One of them was, I had a coach ... I've had her a couple times throughout my life. She's awesome. One of my favorite coaches of all time. Her name is Tara Williams. Tara ... It was interesting because I always thought ... Again, especially people who are religious, there's always this belief of is money going to make me evil? You hear these things on the side. I definitely had this subconscious fear around that. If I get too much money, I'm going to forget God. I'm going to forget my family. All these things couple happen. Because they do. They happen to so many people. We see it. I had that fear behind it. I remember, especially when I bought my house, I was like, I bought this house and it's crazy. Anyway, Tara was at our house, actually, doing a coaching session with my wife and I. It was an interesting thing. But she said a couple things in that meeting that had a big impact on me. One of the things was ... She asked my wife this specifically. "Do you think this is bad that he bought this house?" My wife is like, "Yeah." She has so much guilt associated with it, because she's like ... It was interesting because Tara brought back, "Because you guys have money, talk about things you've done. Last year you gave a million dollars to OUR. Last year you did this. Last year you did this. How many people have you helped? How many entrepreneurs have you empowered? How many jobs have you created?" We started going through this whole thing, and it was like, all these things you're doing has been creating wealth for you. You have this wealth. You can just give it away and you guys do give a lot away, but is it bad for you now to enjoy some of it, to buy a house? Still she was like, "I don't know. Is it bad or not?" She's like, "Now you have this house, what have you guys done with this house?" I was like, "We have our kids here and we have our family here. We bring people here. We're able to serve people at a different level because we have these things." All of a sudden it was like, oh, my gosh, this isn't a bad thing. I remember hearing Richard Branson, somebody asked him ... Who was it? It was another one of those moments for me that opened my mind. But someone asked Branson, "Do you feel guilty that you're not down at the soup kitchen helping feed these people?" Branson's response was so powerful. He said, "The people of the soup kitchen who are feeding people, that's amazing. We're so grateful for them. They're giving their time and their effort. It's powerful. I'm not going to go to the soup kitchen and feed people soup, but I can give the soup kitchen $50,000, and that's going to feed 10,000 people. It's different service but it's still service, and this is able to help even more people." I started thinking about that. Man, these tools that we create, like wealth and the things that we have can be so much more impactful if we use it correctly. It's not a bad thing. It's just understanding these are tools that we have. Anyway ... Josh: It's interesting you say that and phrase it that way because that was one of the things, actually, Brad Gibb, he's a very good friend of mine as well, and we talk a lot. And he's taught me probably more about money as far as investing how it works and how to use it and things like that, probably more than anybody else. Very, very smart. One of the things that he said is money is not all the same. He's like, "You can have a million dollars over here and a million dollars over here and one of them be used for good and to multiply and to be productive, and one of them be used just to indulge and be gluttonous and to be greedy. Is money good or bad? It's not good, it's not bad. It is. It is a tool for exchange. How you go and use it will determine whether or not it's good or bad for you in your own life." When he put it that way, I was like, if I have my money and I'm investing and I'm multiplying it and it's creating freedom and then I'm using that to be able to go out and give back, all of a sudden money is now good. It makes me be able to do my job better. But if I'm just going and I make a million dollars and I go to Vegas and I put 100 grand on black, cool. Maybe once in your lifetime. But that is not a good thing anymore. Now it's taking away from your gift. It can either be an amplifier or it can be something that takes away. That was a really, really big shift for me. It was like, how am I using it? Russell: It's powerful. Again, it just comes down to there's so many subconscious things that are weird about it. Next thing I want to talk about for entrepreneurs too ... And this is a trap with money that I got caught into for almost 15 years. When I stared my business, I remember I started making some money. I figured out what my wife and I needed to live. I think at the time it was $8,000 a month that was giving us the most amazing lifestyle ever. We set it up where our paycheck was eight grand a month and that's what was coming from the company. And everything else in the company I kept reinvesting back into the company. For a while that's important. That's where we're going to grow, where we're going to expand it. I look at my business for the next decade at least, maybe longer, I never pulled anything else out. It only kept getting reinvested, reinvested. And eventually ... Some of you guys heard my story. 10, 12 years ago we had this big crash where everything got shut down and we lost everything. And the thing that sucked is when it all was said and done, I had nothing. We never pulled money out. We never invested. We never did anything. It was all being reinvested back into the business. I got my guarantee, we had our certainty, eight grand a month coming in consistently every single time, but then nothing happened. I remember when we launched after that happened and everything crashed and we were rebuilding back up, during that time we had no money so everything is being reinvested back into the business because we had no business at that point. We started figuring this out. That's where I met Todd. We launched Click Funnels. When we launched Click Funnels, I instantly went back to my same pattern. Like, cool, all the money goes back into Click Funnels. That's how we're going to do this thing. Todd was like, "Dude, just so you understand, I did not build this thing to just have a good paycheck and let this thing keep growing. This is not worth it for me unless we pull money out." I remember I was like ... I had so much fear and I was like, "No. We can't do this." This is one of Todd and I's first and probably only real things where he was just like, "It's not worth it to me unless this is producing money that's being put over here for my family, for my church, for my faith, all the things I want to be doing." Again, we fought back and forth for a couple of months. The very first time we had some profit. I was like, "What do I do with this profit? Put it back in the business." Todd was like, "No, we need to pull it out of the business," and we fought back and forth. Finally, we figured out a way to make us both happy where we figured ... At the time, we need three months of money in reserve. Worst case scenario, that's there. But then after that's over, all of the money, 100% of the money needs to be pulled out and given to the owners. Otherwise we're going to be like you were, Russell, 15 years in and you've got nothing to show for it. All the stress, all the effort, all the energy, and nothing to show for it. That's how we set things up. I remember it was so scary for me. In fact, when we started pulling out and distributing out the profits every single month, I kept mine in there for two years. I didn't touch a penny of it because I'm like ... It's in my separate account. It's over there. What was crazy, though, is that all of a sudden this thing that I was doing started actually producing wealth for me, which took the stress down. I started seeing this thing happening, and all of a sudden it started giving me options where I had no options ahead of time. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs it's like, we have this thing ... It's funny because I see even big people like Gary Vee talk about this, like, "I don't care about money. I dump all my money back in. I'm just building this brand." I'm like, I thought that was the thing for a while too, but it's not. If the business is not producing wealth for the owners, what's the point of it? Eventually you got a job and that's it. It needs to be doing something or else it's not serving you, and therefore, it's not a gift. Josh: Was that the thing, though, helping you overcome that? Was it just doing it? Is that what helped you overcome it? Russell: Yeah, Todd forced me. If it wasn't for Todd, I would still be pulling out eight grand a month and that would be where I would be living. 100%. Todd forced me to do it and it stressed me out. I was so scared. For two years I didn't touch the money and all of a sudden it was like, oh, my gosh, there's this money here. Now I have the ability to ... This thing I had created, this value I was trying to put into the world was paying us back, and now we could ... Now we had all sorts of options. Especially when you're really pushing and you're working hard and you're grinding on something, if aren't seeing some tangible value back from it, it's not serving you. It's just taking from you. Again, this was my personal money, one of my personal issues I struggled with. This may or may not be that, but I would say for all of you guys, looking at this as you are creating a business and creating wealth, you need to be pulling things out. What you do with it is up to you. Like you talked about, use it for good, evil. You can give it to charity. You can do whatever. But if the business is just paying for itself, the business will continue to eat up all your money. It will. You leave money it, it's going to continue to eat it up and it'll disappear as fast as it can possibly happen. But if you start pulling it out and it's over here and it's different, man, it becomes more efficient. It becomes more effective. Everything becomes better because of that. Josh: It's funny, because my thing ... I had that same struggle except I wasn't even paying myself. I was literally just, what are my bills for the month, the bare minimum, and then that was it. And then I met my now wife and I started thinking about finances and she wanted stuff. I was like, but also the business. It was kind of like this thing. Katie came along and was like, "Josh ..." The very first ... She didn't give me a lot of tactical things. It was very mindset-focused. I remember one of the biggest tactical things that she gave me out of the very few that she did, she was like, "You need to pay yourself a paycheck, and that paycheck needs to not only be enough to cover all of your expenses, but it needs to in excess." When I started to put away multiple thousand dollars a month into savings or into being able to invest outside of the company, it changed my whole entire perspective. Weirdly enough, magically, the business made more money. It was like, made it every month. It was like, we're entrepreneurs. We figure out problems. Our brain programs for it. And then I started looking at it as myself as an expense. I was like, I'm a line item on the books. Just like I pay a contractor, that's me. All of a sudden, the business made enough money to cover that. But before that, it didn't. It was crazy. Russell: It's interesting because when you start seeing the results ... I've talked about this before. If you look at my Disc profile, there's the D-I-S-C, and then there's your values. My number one value is ROI. If I can't see the ROI of a situation, it makes it harder for me to do it. I was in business for a decade and a half and the ROI I was getting was good. I was like, "I'm helping people and having success, and it's fun to see the success stories." That was the ROI I was getting, and it was good. It kept me going. But man, I look at the last seven years of Click Funnel, it was like the pressure and the stress and all of the type of things. If it wasn't for the ROI, it took this pressure, but here's the ROI of it, I wouldn't have been able to do it. As soon as I started seeing the ROI and the ROI gets bigger and bigger and bigger, all of a sudden it's like, this becomes fun again and you get excited. How do I make the ROI ... For me, it's all about the ROI, the return on investment, any situation is the key. If you don't have the ROI, it gets hard. It's hard to be creative. It's hard to come up with the next idea, the next thing, and the stress and the pressure that comes. What's the return on investment for the effort you're putting into it? But if you see the ROI and you start amplifying it, then it becomes a more fun game. That's where you start growing from a million to a 10 to 100 and beyond because it's like, I see this game. I'm playing it. I'm getting the return on investment. But I never saw that before because the only return on investment I was getting was this one thing, and those things they feel good, but it's hard to keep score with the feel goods. You got to have a scoreboard to see, like, oh, my gosh, I'm winning. Can I win even more? What's it going to look like? And now it gives you options and opportunities… Josh: You mean you're telling me that all the stress and pressure isn't worth $8,000 a month? Russell: You know, I could get ... I was like ... Nowadays with all of the inflation, I can work at McDonald's for eight grand a month, I think. It's crazy. Josh: Man. Russell: But back then- Josh: That's crazy. Russell: That was the ... Anyway, it's crazy. Josh: You can buy Bitcoin and keep up with inflation. Bitcoin, the savior of money. One more. I kind of want to dive ... I wasn't going to make this a money episode, because that's kind of where it's been. When did you make the shift ... One of the big problems with entrepreneurs, talking maybe a little bit more established entrepreneur, is once they're making money ... I was talking with Brad about this and he was talking about in the inner circle. He was in there ... Or in Category Kings, right? The guy's like, "What's the main problem that you solve?" Brad was like, "So interesting. We thought we could answer that question." Then he asked us it and we try to do it, and it was like, dang, what is the main problem that we solve? What he said is one of the things that they came down to was entrepreneurs know that if they have money, it should be doing more. But they don't know what to do with it. This is something that you probably are an amplified example of this, because you're really, really good at making money. You don't even need to think about what your money should be doing because you can just go make more of it. Once again, that because you've unshackled us. It's like, "All right, want a new car? Go build a funnel. You want a palace? Go build a funnel. Want to take a vacation? Launch a funnel. Just do a funnel and you print money." For you, when did that shift happen for you when you actually started paying attention to, I can't just leave my money in an account right now? I can't just buy cars and houses because those don't make me ... You have houses, you've got the cars, you've got everything you've ever wanted and you still have money left over, so when did you make that shift of, my money needs to be doing more, and how did you solve that problem? Russell: Interesting. This is one that's been more recently solved for me, actually, which is fascinating. For a long I was just hoarding it. Just hoarding it, keeping it here. Then Brad and Ryan ... You have to invest it. I'm like, "I don't want to do that." They forced me to do ... I give them a bunch of money every year and they do whatever they do with it, and that's awesome. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Something is happening." But then the money kept adding up. I remember one day I was like, "I'm in a weird spot where I could buy almost anything I want. What do I want? I'm going to go and spend some money." I remember going to eBay and I was like, "I'm going to buy anything I want." I was searching for stuff, and I spent four hours on eBay when all of a sudden I spent three grand. I was like, "That's it. I got everything I wanted." I was like, "Oh, crap, now what do I do with it?" It was interesting, because for me, it was like ... Again, this is something ... It's been a recent development. I can't remember if it was this podcast or the one I talked about it, I was like, I didn't know what to do with this. Yeah, I could invest in real estate, but that wasn't inspiring to me. I have money in crypto, but that's not inspiring. What's the things that's going to inspire me to want to do more? Again, it's ROI for me. What's going to give me the ROI of now I got to create more money so I can do this thing? So I have a lot of things. Again, we give money to charity. All those things are good and they get me excited. But I was like, what would be the thing that, for me, would amplify? When we bought Dan Kennedy's company, it was the first time I felt it. I bought his thing. We reorganized it, cleaned it up, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm able to take these things that were so precious to me and I can bring them back to the world, and I can monetize them. I can actually make money off of this thing." I got really excited. I told you I started buying old books. I started investing in Napoleon Hill books and Charles Haanel and Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles and all these people, the founding fathers of personal development and business and all these kinds of things. I've literally spent a small fortune ... I've spent a lot of money in the last couple months on these old, old books, because now it's like, I'm not investing in real estate that's over here. I'm investing in these things I don't care about. Now it's like I'm investing in something that I can take and that I can turn this into more money, and I can turn it into help. I can serve my entrepreneurs. I can do more things with it. For me, that's what's been stimulating for me. That was the investment of ... It was like, I can dump it back into things, but it was like something that's meaningful to me. For some people, crypto is meaningful. For some people it's NFT. Finding the thing that's not just like, I'm investing to invest, but what's the thing that you're passionate about it where it becomes more than just ... For me, that's what I'm geeking out on. You know this, next door I'm building a 20,000 square foot library to house all these books, to build an event center, to build all these kind of things because this is what I feel like my life's mission is. I'm curating all these ideas and I'm bringing them back to people in the simple new form to help these ideas and these concepts live on. For me, that's double fulfilling because it'll make me money, but it's also something that can serve the people I've been called to serve as well. Again, buying Kennedy's company, I'm serving these people, but I'm also making money, which gives me the ability to serve more people. It's kind of fun. Josh: What was the shift, though? For a while you didn't do that, right? Russell: For a while I just sat there. I didn't know what it was. Josh: Who or what got you to the point where you're like, "Okay, I've got to go figure this out"? Yes, this is what you ended up doing with it, but I think a lot of people, there's got to be that thing that's like, "This is when I realized I got to figure out ..." Or some people just let it sit their whole life, I guess. You know what I'm saying? Russell: I heard stories about ... I don't know how true ... But like Scottie Pippen or Mike Tyson, he made half a billion dollars and he's broke. I was like, I don't want to be that dude who made a half a billion dollars and is broke right now. I need to figure out ... I always joke with Brad and Ryan when we were writing their webinar page initially, I was like ... On 30 Rock, there's that scene where Liz Lemon is talking to Alec Baldwin and he's like, "I need that thing that rich people do where they turn money into more money." He's like, "Investing?" He's like, "Yeah. I want to do that." For me, it was like, I've got money here. I need to figure out how to turn money into more money, that's not just me doing the whole thing. How do we amplify what we’re doing? How do we have that exponential growth? That was kind of the thing that got me into it. Again, initially it was doing the things that weren't exciting. I'd invested money in real estate and I hated that, so I had Brad and Ryan, I invested money with them. That was cool. It was passive. It wasn't passionate. I was trying to figure out what's the thing that I'm going to be passionate about, where now it becomes part of a game. Now I can see the ROI on this thing. I invested $40,000 this weekend on old books, how do I turn that into $400,000 or four million or 40 million? Can I do that? Now begins ... Now it's fun. Some people, real estate is that game. I got friends who own 100 houses, or 200 houses, and that's the game that they love. I look at Tai Lopez and he's buying these businesses. That's the game that he loves. What's the game you're going to love, the investing game you're going to love? There's a million ways to invest, but when you find one that you love, then it becomes ... Now it becomes a fun part of the game. I think it's understanding first off you need to do it, otherwise you're going to ... You mentioned this ... I can't remember if it was before we started recording, but people who have won Two Comma Club and they got nothing, or Two Comma Club X and they're broke. Entrepreneurs are good at generating money, but there's this other part that you got to learn how to invest it correctly. Otherwise, you're going to pull a Tyson or a Pippen and be broke in a couple of years from now. Yeah, I got 3 Two Comma Club awards on the wall, but I'm trying to figure out how to feed my family this weekend, and that’s now where you want to be… Josh: That's so crazy that's a reality for people. It really, really is. I think that's one of the things that I am very, very thankful to have learned relatively early on, is ... Russell: They're two different skill sets. Making money- Josh: They are. Russell: And keeping money are not the same thing. Josh: Yeah. Russell: They are completely different skill sets. In fact, typically, the people who are good at making money are the worst at managing it. Josh: Keeping it. Russell: It's like yin and yang. Understanding that if you're good at making it, you find people around you, like Brad and Ryan, I was like, "Here's money. Do that thing you do because I don't want to mess it up." Josh: Yeah. Russell: In fact, it's funny, before I invested money with Brad and Ryan, I invested it in two different deals. I was like, "This is the greatest thing in the world." Both of them, literally both of them turned out to Ponzi schemes. I got to write off multiple of millions of dollars last year because I gave money to ideas that were so good that me as the entrepreneur was like, "This is genius. This is the greatest thing in the world." Ponzi scheme. I got sold on the thing. It's funny, one of my friends just sold his business for eight figures and he messages me. He was like, "All right. I want to ask your opinion. Where should I put this money?" I was like, "Dude, do not ask me. If I think it's a good idea, it's going to be a Ponzi scheme. Find someone who, that's their life, is that, like Brad and Ryan. Go give your money to them," or find something like I'm doing now with the books and stuff, where it's like now. This is something that fits into my skill set. I think it was ... What's the old dude who invests all the money? Warren Buffett, that said only invest in things you understand. It's like, I understand how to turn old information into money. I'm investing in information and intellectual property because I can turn that into more money, and so that becomes something I can invest in, because I understand the game. I don't understand- Josh: So interesting. Russell: This, but I do understand this, therefore, I will invest in the thing I understand because I can turn this into more money. Josh: That makes sense. Side note on Warren Buffett, you know 80% of his wealth or something like that came off of nine trades? Russell: Really? Josh: Nine investments that he made, it produced 80% of his wealth or something like that. Isn't that insane? Russell: That is fascinating. Josh: That's why when ... I read the quote from him, it was in the context of this quote. It was like, Warren Buffett is like, everyone thinks they have to make a bunch of good decisions. He was like, "I try to make three good decisions a year." I was like, "Oh, my gosh. What the heck?" And then I found out that 80% of his wealth came from ... It was eight or nine trades or something, or investments, and I was like, "All right. I guess that makes sense, then, if you only need to make ..." Anyway, last question, rapid fire question on money. Is there anything that you could do, if you could go back and change something about what you've done or your handling with money, is there anything that you would change, and if so, what's the biggest thing that would be? Russell: Good question. I think I would've started ... Number one, I would've started pulling money out of my business faster. Number two, I would've had a plan for what I would do with that money. I wish I would've said, "I'm going to pull out ... After three months of thing, pull out all the profit, I'm going to put 25% in real estate, 25% in crypto, 25% in something else, and just have that happening in the background, I'd be a much wealthier man today." It took me a long, long time before I did that. Todd forced me to start putting money into crypto, which was one of the greatest gifts ever for me. Brad and Ryan are now forcing me to put money over here. It's like taking that and putting it in spots where again, it's not going to be 100%. I'm going to fall for two Ponzi schemes a year probably, but if I can get one of them to win and three of them to fail, or whatever that is, that's the big thing. I always thought that I will start pulling money out when blah. When I hit Two Comma Club, when I hit a million. The problem is that win never comes. You got to structure from day number one. When money comes in, boom. Profits come out. This happens here. I pay myself first. From the money I pay myself, 10% is going to go for me to go do stupid things, 25% is going to go into real estate or Bitcoin or stocks or whatever. And dividing that stuff up so it's happening at a small level, because when that happens, I wasted a decade and a half before any kind of investments happening. Can you imagine if I had 15 years of the stuff I was doing, turning into something? I missed out on so much of that, that I wish I would've done. Josh: You just got to make sure that you have a small percentage there, which is dedicated to losing bets and Bitcoin to Josh. If you have that, then we're good. For the rest of your life, you're going to be losing bets, so that's how that's going to work. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode with money. I'll let you sign it off, but this was awesome. We get to hear Russell Brunson talk about money, which is something that, you make a ton of it, but you don't really talk about it, which is awesome. Thanks for sharing a little bit more. Russell: Thank you. I apologize I don't have a framework for this yet, but this gets me thinking, man, if I could figure out something for entrepreneurs, this is the next thing to do, so then I'll talk more about it as I figure things out. But it's fascinating. I remember I bought a Dan Kennedy course on wealth creation, and it was fascinating because I'd heard Dan talk about building businesses and all that sort of stuff, but it was the first time he ever talked about wealth. Again, same thing. Fascinating. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I never thought about that side of the coin because most entrepreneurs don't talk about it, or don't think about it. I think it's important for us to think and talk and do more with it because again, 15 years of never investing anything, man, it would've been nice. I'd be in a different spot right now than I am today, for sure. Thank you, Josh, for hanging out and talking about money. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. If you did, let us know if you want more about money and wealth and these kind of things. Let us know and we'll go deeper on topics. Just take a screen shot of this on your phone, post it, and tag me and write your #1 question you want to hear, and maybe we'll talk about it on the next podcast. Thanks again. Thank you, Josh, and I will see you guys soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Russell went live today to answer a question from the community.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing---Transcript---Hey everyone, it's Russell Brunson welcoming you back to the Marketing Seekers podcast! Today's topic is a popular one – how to land your first client as a funnel builder. Building funnels is crucial in today's market, honing skills like copywriting, design, and strategy. The key? Start by offering your services to someone else. Find your dream client and offer to build their funnel for free. I did this with Drew Canole, helping him launch his Organifi funnel. His success became my case study, attracting more clients.Here's the plan: identify your dream client, offer to build their funnel for free, deliver stellar results, and use that as leverage to attract paying clients. It's about showcasing your ability to deliver results. This strategy applies not only to funnel building but to any venture – courses, products, you name it.So, focus on creating a compelling case study, and watch your business grow. Keep those questions coming, and I'll keep answering them on the podcast. Thanks for tuning in! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a rare Russell rant, find out what made him upset today, and how you can protect yourself from annoying customers.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing---Transcript---Hey everyone, it's Russell Brunson here, and today I've got a bit of a rant to share on the Marketing Secrets podcast. Now, I'm usually a positive guy, but today, I'm feeling slightly annoyed. Let me tell you why.I pour my heart and soul into serving people. I work tirelessly, create valuable offers, and invest millions to simplify and change lives. Yet, there's a small but vocal group of people who seem to despise success. They put up barriers and complain, hindering their own progress.Let me give you some context. We're in the midst of launching Dan Kennedy's newsletter, and while I know it'll yield long-term ROI, the upfront investment is staggering. I had to acquire Dan's company, negotiate, write content, hire teams – the costs are astronomical. And yet, we're offering $20,000 worth of bonuses for just $97 a month after a free trial.It frustrates me to see some people's attitudes. They want the freebies but balk at a slight inconvenience, like higher shipping fees. Instead of quietly canceling, they make a scene on Facebook, airing their grievances. It's mind-boggling.But here's the thing: You attract who you are, not who you want. I've noticed this pattern for years. Within minutes of meeting someone, I can tell if they'll be successful based on their mindset and attitude. It's uncanny.So, if you're the kind of person who complains, refunds, and blames others, guess what? That's the kind of customers you'll attract. But if you take personal responsibility, seek value, and show gratitude, you'll draw in like-minded individuals.I've refunded a product only once in over 20 years, and even then, the person gave me the refund without making a fuss. Why? Because I take responsibility for my choices. I dig for value and don't expect it to be handed to me on a silver platter.So, my message to you is simple: Become the kind of customer you want to be. Take ownership, seek value, and show gratitude. That's how you attract success. Alright, I've got to run to my daughter's Christmas concert. Take care, and I'll catch you later. Bye, everyone! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever witness someone succeed big time at something and then they can't repeat that success? Why is that? Russell examines the ingredients of success and why some people have staying power and others fizzle out.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing---Transcript---It sounds like you're exploring the concept of longevity and sustained success in both the world of UFC and business. You're noting how some individuals or businesses can achieve momentary success, yet struggle to maintain it over time, while others are able to sustain success and even continue growing. You're drawing parallels between UFC champions who have defended their titles multiple times and businesses that have launched successful offers repeatedly.One key insight you've highlighted is the importance of building a strong relationship and community with your audience. You've observed that some businesses focus solely on monetizing their list without nurturing the relationship, which can lead to audience disengagement and eventual decline. In contrast, you emphasize the significance of continually adding value and stacking offers that align with your core message and mission.Your message underscores the importance of consistency, focus, and delivering on the promises made to your audience. By staying true to your core message and continually providing value, you can build trust, loyalty, and long-term success. This aligns with principles outlined in your book "Expert Secrets," particularly the concept of identifying and leading with a new opportunity and then stacking additional opportunities to deepen engagement and retention.Overall, you're advocating for a strategic approach to business that prioritizes relationship-building, value creation, and alignment with your core message to achieve sustained success in the long term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russell and Josh reveal the 2 biggest biohack, supplements, diets, brain food, focus & marketing.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing---Transcript---In a recent episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast, Russell Brunson and Josh Forti discussed the significance of biohacking, diet, energy, and supplements in enhancing brain function and overall health for entrepreneurs. Russell emphasized the need to optimize health to achieve greater productivity and success in business.Russell shared his personal journey from being a wrestler to becoming health-conscious after gaining significant weight post-wrestling. He initially hired a trainer and changed his diet, losing a substantial amount of body fat. This transformation highlighted the importance of health in improving productivity, as Russell realized that better health allowed him to accomplish more each day.One key topic was the timing of food intake. Russell noted that consuming carbohydrates can cause brain fog and fatigue. Therefore, he avoids carbs in the morning and afternoon, focusing on high fats and proteins instead. Carbs are reserved for the evening when they aid in falling asleep.The discussion also covered the use of nootropics and other supplements. While Russell appreciates certain nootropics like Alpha BRAIN, he is cautious about more extreme supplements and substances due to potential risks. He highlighted the importance of a balanced approach to supplementation, ensuring that any supplements taken are based on individual needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.Gut health emerged as a crucial factor. Russell mentioned that gut health directly impacts brain function. He shared his regimen of digestive enzymes, fermented foods like sauerkraut, and kombucha to improve digestion and nutrient absorption. He also recommended specific products like Gaines in Bulk digestive enzymes and GTs Alive mushroom root beer, which contains reishi, chaga, and turkey tail mushrooms for gut health.The conversation also touched on the role of sleep and sunlight as fundamental biohacks. Russell stressed that sleep is the most effective performance enhancer and that exposure to natural sunlight is vital for overall health.Josh Forti added his perspective on health and fitness, mentioning his experience with customized health analysis through blood tests and other assessments. This personalized approach helped him understand his specific health needs and tailor his diet and supplements accordingly.The episode concluded with a discussion about the balance between professional success and personal well-being. Russell and Josh emphasized that focusing on health is not just about physical appearance but about ensuring long-term mental and physical performance, which ultimately contributes to greater success in business and life.Overall, the podcast highlighted the interconnectedness of health, productivity, and entrepreneurial success. By optimizing diet, supplements, and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurs can enhance their mental clarity, energy levels, and overall performance, leading to more effective business practices and a better quality of life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this second installment of this special interview, Russell and Josh go super deep on ‘the master story’ and the attractive character…and what happens when you have tons of followers and NO ONE buys! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. So, today's episode is probably from most of my conversations with Josh, might have been one of my favorites. It was really, really fun. We started talking about expert secrets and storytelling and how they work, and attractive character profiles, which one you should be using, and how they work, and can you change them? And then also he started going into his concept of the master story, which is something I talk about in Perfect Webinar, but he goes really, really deep in it. And anyway, we geeked out. This was a really fun episode. I hope you enjoy it. With that said, let me cue up the theme song. When we get back, you'll have a chance to listen to this exciting conversation with me and Josh talking about story and attractive character, and a bunch of other really cool things. JoshForti: I got to ask this. Are you not on Twitter? Like I see you on Twitter a lot, and I see you posting stuff on Twitter. But is it not you that's engaging on Twitter? Russell: No, I don't know how to tweet. Josh: You don't know how to tweet? Russell, I tweeted you a lot. Or not a lot, but I tweeted you quite a bit. Russell: Oh, hey. Josh: And then sometimes you like my tweets. Dang it. Russell: I do like all your tweets. They're awesome. Josh: Yeah. Oh, man. Russell: I personally, I enjoy Instagram, probably my favorite. And then Facebook's probably number two. But that's the two social platforms I spend my personal time on the most. So, if it's from either of those two platforms, it's usually me. If it's other places... Josh: Do you have it like broken up? Like are you like, "Instagram, I do this type of content and stuff on. And Facebook, I do this type of content on." Or is it kind of like a mixture of both? Or... Russell: Um. Josh: For you personally. I know your team posts stuff, but... Russell: The only place I really post/do stuff typically is Instagram, like stories. That's where I kind of, like me personally, do stuff. And then Facebook and my personal page, probably once, every once in a while, I drop stuff there. And everything else, that's my team. Josh: Yeah, that's rare though, not often. Russell: Yeah. Josh: You're not like me who's like, "What? It's been 48 hours without some form of controversy? What can I say? Oh my God." All right. Well, actually, I kind of want to talk about that though. Not so much controversy, but creating content specifically around storytelling, because I think this is probably one of the biggest... Let me give backstory, a little context around this. I came into the world completely backwards of what most people do, right? So I was the guy that came into the world, and most people have no following and no followers, and they can't get leads to happen. Right? And they don't get anybody to show up to their webinar. And then they're super depressed because nobody showed up and nobody bought. I had the exact opposite problem. I had everybody show up and nobody bought. And let me tell you, that's way more depressing. You know why? Because when everybody shows up and nobody buys, you're like, "Crap. Now I really am screwed because I have no idea what's going on." Right? Russell: It was me, and not the… whatever, yeah. Josh: Right. It's not because nobody's hearing it. It's because I actually suck. And I remember the first time I ever did a webinar, we actually... I don't know if you remember this or not. I actually sent you a Snapchat. This is right when you first got Snapchat. This is way, way back in the day. I've told this story before. And I went and I was like, "Russell, what's up, man? I'm trying to build this webinar. How much would you charge me to build out a webinar for me or whatever?" Right? And you sent me a little video, a Snapchat video back. You're in the Jeep, and you were like, "Man, I don't really do that. I don't really do that anymore." So I like snapped you back, and then you snapped me back, and you're like, "It'd probably be like $250,000 or something like that. But I don't really do that." I'm like, "Man, I really wish I would've hired you for 250 grand." But anyway, so I go and we do this huge webinar, and everyone told us... We were like, "We're going to have all these people sign up." And everyone's like, "No. No, you're not. Nobody gets people to their webinar that easy. You maybe have a hundred registrants." We had 2000 people register, and we had a thousand people... We maxed out the room with a thousand people on live. At the pitch, there was like 982 people in the room. I go through, I do my pitch. No one buys, not a single person. And then we hung up, and like an hour goes by, and one person had bought. And most miserable, depressing... Russell: That's the worst because then you're like, "Crap. I thought there was no sound or something. Maybe they didn't hear me." Josh: Right, right, right. But I sat there and it was a bad webinar. We had like dozens, probably hundreds of emails and comments of like, "Can I have my money back for a free webinar? This totally sucks. Worst experience ever." It was awful, right? And what was interesting is that really scarred me for a while, from doing presentations and from doing anything where I pitched live. And so I basically went and I just did sales from that point on. I did lots of presentations. I did lots of content. But I did not actually go and pitch because really, it was like PTSD almost. Right? It was like, "I don't want to go back there." And what was interesting is I went and I would do sales, and I got good at sales, but sales is hard, man. Sales is just a different game. It's just like pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. Right? And then my brother died, and out of just sheer not knowing what to do, I just started sharing my story because at that point you're like, "What do you do? My whole life is messed up at this point. I'm so confused." And so I just start sharing what I was going through, and I start sharing things of like the emotions and what I'm learning and what I'm going through. And I remember people just started buying, and it was like the weirdest thing, because I wasn't selling anything. Right? But I would go through and I'd be like, "I'm super grateful and thankful to have an audience right now because I'm able to go through and have a business that allows me to go and like be mobile and go to my brother's funeral or whatever." And then people started buying my programs. And I was like, "What in the world?" And then I would share other things, and then people would start buying. And I'm like, "I'm not actually selling these things. I'm just talking about my life." And what was interesting is I went back eventually later that year, and I went back to all these different people, and I was like, "Why did you buy this product?" And they're like, "Well, because you told such and such a story." Oh, that's interesting. So then I went over here and I was like, "Why did you buy that product?" And they're like, "Well, you guys told such and such story." And it was a completely different story. And it was like they were buying because they would hear a story, and they would associate that story with a product that I was selling, and they would go buy it. And so I had all these different products and all these different stories, and I was like, "Okay, well, I got to figure out what's the one story that I want people to figure out?" Right? So I could sell the one product. And so that's what I've really been focused on recently. But that lesson taught me that storytelling was everything, because I had heard that from you a million times. Right? Russell: Yeah. You didn't believe it. Josh: Story, story, story, story. Right? And I'm like, "I'm telling stories, Russell. What more do you want me to do?" But I wasn't. I was telling facts and I was going out there and trying to sound smart. And when I just let go of it all and was like, "This is the story, like the real, the raw, the genuine. I'm not trying to sell you anything. This is legitimately what's going on in my life." I made more money and more sales than I had before. And so I would love for you to talk about... Like I know in Expert Seekers you go through like storytelling and all the different, the core four stories, and the change of false beliefs. But what's the key? And maybe that's it, like going back through that. And that's fine. But like what's the key to telling a good story? Because I think not only do people... And there's a follow-up question to this, which I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. But what are the elements that make a good story? What actually makes a story work? And how do you tell one effectively? Russell: Yeah. First off, it's fascinating because I went through a very similar journey when I got in this world too. I remember going to my very first event. I saw people selling from stage, and seeing the numbers and doing the math, I was just like, "This is crazy. There's no way this actually works." And then I remember getting invited to speak at a seminar, and it was different because webinars are painful, but man, standing on stage and doing a pitch, and then it bombing was even worse. Because it's just like all these people, nobody moved, and it was just like... In fact, I remember I was like, "I'll never, after the first one, I'll never do this again." That was the worst experience ever. And that's when I joined the Dan Kennedy world, and they had this public speaking course. It was like 40 CDs. I remember the pack was like this thick of CDs. And I bought it because I was like, "I want to figure this thing out." I started listening to him. And I don't remember the course at all, other than this feeling of just like it's not teaching. Teaching is not what gets people to buy when you're on stage. It's telling these stories that connect with people. And it shifted my mindset, and so it shifted to the point where I went and tried again. And the next time I tried, I tried to weed these things in, and I got like six sales, a thousand bucks apiece. And I was like, "Oh, okay." Like I got the reward of like this actually worked. And then I was like, "Okay, do it again and do it again." And then you start getting obsessed with it. And then for me, most of my education for the next five years... Because there wasn't a lot of people that had courses on public speaking or things like that. There were a couple, but there wasn't a lot. I just went... And from a timeline, it was before the big 2000 whatever, the big crash in 2008 or whatever. And so there were events happening every single weekend. So I'd go to an event every weekend, and I would sit there and I would just watch the people speak. And I would watch what they were doing and then see how people would buy at the end. And people, the ones that had the big table rushes and stuff, I was like, "Okay, what did they just do? What'd they do to me? How did they do it? What did they say?" And I was like trying to dissect what they were doing. And then I would model that for my presentations. I'd be like, "Oh, I like how they did that part, how they told the story or how they got emotional." Sort of like just studying. McCall Jones calls it charisma hacking. I didn't know that's what it was at the time. But I was just watching how they did stuff and how it made me feel. And it wasn't just like selling from stage. I started watching religion people as well. Like some of the best presenters in the world are preachers and pastors and things like that. And I was watching just people speak and how they got me to feel and move, and how they told stories in a way that was exciting. And then so that's like this study I started going on. Then I met Michael Hague. I started learning about story structure. I was like, "This isn't just made up. There's actual structures and there's things in place. And this guy's way easier," because now I'm not just guessing. There's actually a pathway. Anyway, so that's kind of my history with it too, but it's fascinating. But I think that if I was to break it down into something for people to understand that's not complex but simple... Because you can go to the Expert Secrets book and it can get really complex. But the simplest form is that if somebody's coming to you, it's because they're looking for something different, right? They want change. They want more. There's some result. And I always think about this like on a mountain because Dan Kennedy used to talk about this. He's like, "You need to become the guru on the mountain. And people are going to come to the base of the mountain, and the closer they get to you up the mountain, the more they're going to pay." Right? So, the base of the mountain, they're paying a hundred bucks a month for a newsletter. And then they want to get closer, they pay 500 bucks a month, then a thousand bucks a month. And for whatever, for 50 grand, they can sit at your feet and talk to you." And he used to always talk about that guru on the mountain thing. And back when I was first studying this, the way people sold was different. It was much more like that. It was more of a status play like, "This is how successful and why you should come up here. And if you want to be like me, you got to come to me, pay me more money." And I never really resonated with that, partially because I'm awkward and I always felt awkward like positioning myself. So I never liked that, and so I started learning about story structure. It was cool because I realized that the positioning of you on the mountain, it's essential, right? But it's not like you sell from the top of the mountain, yelling down to the people. It's like people see you on the top of the mountain, and they're down here like, "I want to be up there." You're like, "Cool." And then it's you coming down off the mountain, running down to where they're at, and being like, "Okay, I know exactly where you're at. Let me tell you my story, because I was in your same spot at one time." Right? And that's the power. So, if you look at the way I do my presentations, I usually drop like one slide or one thing like, "Hey, this is the thing you want." Right? Like, "Cool, I've made whatever." Like I'll do my quick posturing just so they know that I've been to the top of the mountain they're trying to get to. But then I don't stay there. But again, if you watch the old-time speakers from the nineties and early 2000s, they would spend the 90-minute presentation talking about them on top of the mountain the whole time. And I just hate it. So I drop real quick, so you know that I know I've been where we're trying to get to, but I got to come back very, very quickly. And the story I'm telling you is the story, my story, of them. Right? I have to put myself in their spot. Like where was I when I went through the same thing? Because all of us, if you got to the top of the mountain, somewhere you had to start hiking. And you went through that journey to be the guru on the top. Right? And so it's like coming back and remembering where are they at or where were you at, telling your story. And if you tell it the way that they connect, they're like, "Oh my gosh, they are me. I was Russell. Russell went through this. He understands." And there's empathy. Then they trust you. Then they want to go on that journey with you. That's like when you came out and you started telling your story, it wasn't you posturing a position of how great you were. But it's like, "Hey, I've done this thing you're trying to figure out. But let me tell you my story and how I'm struggling, how I'm still struggling, the struggles I went through, and the pain and the fear." And all of sudden they're like, "Oh, I feel that too. I feel the pain. I feel the fear. I understand those things. This person understands me. I can trust them to take me on this journey because he's not going to be the person who's just positioning how great they are. It's someone who I have empathy with. They understand me." And that's the key. Because if they feel like you understand them, then they're going to go on that journey with you. And you do that by telling the story, like your version of their story. Because they're living it right now, and you've lived it the past. You've got to tell that in a way where they connect and now they're going to want to go on that journey with you. And that's kind of the key to it all. Josh: That's super, super interesting. Yeah. Because when I think about story structure, because I've like tried to simplify things down in my own head... Because it's always interesting, because I'll watch everything that you do, and so it's funny whenever I do presentations, people are like, "You're a mini Russell." I'm like, "Well, that makes sense actually. Right?" Like I've watched all this stuff, right? So, but for me, man, going through Expert Secrets, I don't know, it was probably the third or fourth or maybe even fifth time through before I finally actually was like, "Oh yeah, you actually do know what you're talking about." Because every step of the way I'd be like, "But my story doesn't fit in. That doesn't work." Or like, "Mine doesn't have that." Or like, "It's not that systematic." Or, "Russell, it's too much of a science. There's more of an art to it." And then I'd read about it and I'd be like, "This is so scientific." And then I'd watch you do it and I'm like, "That's so artistic." And I'm like, "But they're the same." Right? And so I would try to figure out ways to simplify it down to a way I can understand it. And then once I would understand it, I would plug it into yours, and then it would work. Right? And so for me, it was always like, okay, there's four parts. It's, "How did I get here?" Right? That's backstory. Like, "How did I get to right here right now?" That's like that. And then it's, "Where am I going?" Right? So, the goal, the desire. And then it's, "How am I going to get there?" New vehicle, new opportunity, right? And then it's, "What's it going to look like?" The vision, like what's it going to look like in the process of all that, so we can paint this thing and we get people emotionally attached? And so for me, in my brain... And they don't always happen in that sequential order. Like sometimes you start with the desire, and then you go back, but it has to have all four of those parts. And then I would take that and I would go, and then I would apply it to the Expert Secrets, and then it would start working. Right? I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what Russell's doing here and here and here." And then you actually have this whole framework out about it, right? And I think one of the things for me is I always go... Because we've done book clubs on Expert Secrets. I teach stories in marketing. I teach stories in personal development. Like stories and storytelling is a big part of what I do now, especially over the last six months and moving forward. One of the questions that continues to come up is... Well, there's two parts. Let me start with the first one. "Hey, Russell, that's all great, but I'm not a leader. I'm not the attractive character that's the leader." Right? "I'm not the person that figured it out and am living my customer's journey." And there's actually a lot more of those people than I thought. I thought most people were leaders because that's what I was when I first got started. So my question is, do you tell this story a different way? Or how is the story different, how is it positioned differently, if you are not the leader? Because I know you're not in your story. You're the reluctant hero, right? And so I tell people, I'm like, "Before you start figuring out your story, you got to figure out what attractive character you're going to be." Right? And we go through the four inside of Expert Secrets. It's like there's the leader, there's the adventurer, there's the reporter, and then there's the reluctant hero. And what's interesting is early on in my journey, I was the hero. Right? I was the one, I was like, "Guys..." I was literally this broke kid, freaking living in a $500-a-month apartment with duct tape windows. And now I'm not, right? And Instagram was the thing, and social media, and here we go. Right? But as I evolved, then the podcast came. And without even realizing it, I became the reporter. Right? And so how does, based on your attractive character, how does that change the story or how you tell it? Russell: Yeah. And it's funny because mine's transformed, not only just throughout time, but in different situations as well. Right? Like sometimes I'm the attractive... You know, when I got started, say when I was an interviewer, so I interviewed people. So I was a reporter for a long time. But then I transitioned to like a reluctant hero. But there's other times, like if I'm on Hockey Live, I'm not the reluctant hero, right? At that time I've got to be the hero. Like I'm coming in and I'm setting authority because I've got a whole group of alphas in the room. And if I don't come there as like the head alpha, they will run me over. If you're like in a situation with Tony Adib, like if I'm that situation, I'm transitioning more back to reporter because I'm leveraging Tony's expertise and things like that. And so I'm going back as a reporter. Same thing with Dan Kennedy right now. You look at... It's fascinating. Like we just bought Dan Kennedy's company, right? We just launched the first Dan Kennedy new offer. By the way, if you're listening, go to NoBSLetter.com and go sign up. But yeah, like... Josh: By the way, make sure you go through my link. Russell: Yeah. But look at like how I've... It's /JoshForti, yeah. Josh: Yeah. Russell: But if you look at like how I'm positioning this offer, it's not me coming as like Russell's the alpha. Right? I'm coming back here as like, "This is my mentor. Boom. And I had this chance to acquire, but I'm going to go through 40 years of his stuff, and I'm bringing it back to you." And I'm pulling these things out, and this is what I learned from Dan and what I learned from Dan here." Right? And it's me coming back in a reporter role with my mentor, and that's how I'm introducing the world to him. So, it shifts, right? It shifts based on the story and the situation. Like what are you using it for? Right? Like I could've come in and be like... Because there's different posturing. Like I could've come in and been the hero and like, "I bought Dan's company. We bringing it back from the dead. Da, da, da." Like put it on me. But that story, first off, didn't feel good. But second off, it's not the story that needs to get people to move. The stories to get people to move is me giving homage to this guy who's changed my life, and now I'm going to be having the chance to bring these things back to you. Like me becoming the reporter back in that phase, in that business and that side, is a more powerful story to use. Right? And so it's all coming down to figuring out what's going to be the best story, right, in this situation and where you're at, and thinking through that. Because right now you're in a reporter role, but other times I still see you, you shift back over where you're running different things. So it's just trying to figure out what's... Again, these are all tools. I was talking to the Two Comma Club X members this week. And part of the group's doing challenges, part are doing webinars, part are doing different things. And they're like, "Which one should I do? Which one's the best?" I'm like, "No, it's not which one's best. These are tools. Like this is a hammer, this is a saw, and different jobs and different tools." And so it's like if I'm coming in here, I want a hammer, but over here I want a saw, and here I want a hammer and a saw, because I'm going to do this thing. Right? And same thing with stories, understanding that. Like your attractive character can shift. Mine's shifted more throughout time, but also situationally it shifts where it's like, okay, this is the role I need to be here, and it's okay to shift back to reporter. I've seen people, in fact... Well, can I drop names? Yeah. Who cares? So like Grant Cardone's a good example. I love Grant. Grant is like the leader, right? And at 10X, after we set all these sales records, Grant was going to shift to the interviewer and he was going to interview me. And it would've been a really fascinating thing for him to pick my brain and ask. And we sat down and we got in the thing, and he sat there for a second, and all of a sudden he was like, he didn't want to. He thought like shifting to the interviewer was a decrease in status. And he literally stopped before he started and said, "Actually I don't want to interview you. I'm going to have somebody else do it." And he got off the little thing, had somebody else come in, and that person interviewed me. And I was like, "Ah, dang it." It would've been so powerful for him. Josh: Come on, Grant. Russell: It would been so powerful for him, for his positioning, for people to connect with him better, if he would've come off like, "I'm Grant Cardone." You know, trade, come down for a second, and done the reporter, and been excited. Because he genuinely was excited. He, backstage, was freaking out. He was like, "I've never seen what you just did. That was amazing." Like it was this cool thing. And it humanized him for a minute. And he could have had that moment where he did it, and he didn't. Whereas me right now with Kennedy, I'm paying all homage to Dan. He's amazing. And it, first off, makes the offer better, makes the story better, but it also makes me more... People connect because now it's like they're the same thing. Like, "Oh my gosh. I have mentors. I can be excited about what they're learning." I don't have to posture all the time where I'm the only person. You know what I mean? Josh: Yeah. Well, it's super interesting that you say that because studying influencers has been something that I've kind of geeked out about. And one of the things you talk about in there, in Expert Secrets or whatever, is the attractive character has flaws. Right? And when the attractive character owns those flaws, it actually makes their supporters love them more. And what's interesting is that I've looked at people like Trump, and we're not trying to get political here in any way, shape or form, but one of the big criticisms of Trump, even from his own people, and I being one of those, is he never admits when he's wrong. He never will step down and even give the idea that somebody else could be right. And because of that, that actually hurts him a lot more in the long run than in the short, than it gains him in the short term. Right? And so it's that same concept. And then I look at someone like a Dave Portnoy, right? And do you follow Dave at all? Dave Portnoy? Okay. So he's the founder of Barstool Sports, and he's the one that did the Barstool Fund and everything like that or whatever. Here's a dude who, I mean, his fan base is not as large as Trump's, but as far as like fans and fans, people love Portnoy. Right? Like, I mean, there's his fans. But he makes fun of himself constantly, right? And he's constantly coming back and being like, "Yeah, I messed up." All of his bets are public because he owns like a gambling or a sports betting company. So you go to his Twitter and it's nothing but all of his wins and then all of his losses. Right? And so you can see both, and people just love it. And anytime people are trying to bash up on him, all of his supporters come and they're like, "Yeah, we know he's an idiot. Right? But he's an amazing idiot. Yeah." Right? And so it's like when you show that other side, people connect to you even better. And it's such a fascinating concept because it's opposite of what our brains think. You know what I mean? Russell: A hundred percent. It's counterintuitive. Like we want to always posture position, thinking that's the... It's just like the guru on the mountain we talked about, right? Like in the eighties, nineties, every expert wanted to be the person, the infallible expert up here at the top. But man, that's not what gets people to connect. It's the coming down and like, "Dude, I struggle too. I remember the pain. I remember the pressure, the fear, the scare, like all those things." And that's what connects people. People crave connection now. Maybe there was a time in history where people just wanted the other thing. But nowadays it's not that way. People connect with vulnerability. But it's hard, it's scary, because it's like... In fact, Natalie Hodson, I think she quoted Brene Brown, but she's the one that told me this. She's like, "When you're vulnerable, you feel small, but people looking at it, it feels makes you feel big to them." So it's a weird thing where you're like, "I feel horrible," but it makes them look at you and like, "Oh my gosh, this person's willing to say things I'm thinking in my head and I don't dare to talk about because of my own fear and anxiety and status, and all those kind of things." And it gives them that thing, and that's what gets people to connect with you. It's really fascinating. Josh: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay. Last piece on this, which will take up the rest of the time for sure, is the number one question that I get hands down when it comes to stories... I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but in the odd case that you haven't, Russell, your people want to know this. Okay? The number one question is: How do I know which story to tell? Russell: Ooh, that's good. Josh: Right? It's the hardest thing because people are like... And it's always hilarious because I'll sit down and I'll be like, "Well, what story are you trying to tell?" And they're like, "I don't know." And I'm like, "Well, here's your life story." And I will tell them because I'm like their coach and I've been around them for six weeks or whatever it is. And I'll go, "Here's your story. Boom, boom, boom." And I'll summarize their entire life in 30 seconds. And they're like, "How did you do that?" And I'm like, "Because it..." Well, anyway, I want to know the answer to their question. How do you know what story to tell? Because everybody has these. We're so close, right? And for me, I'm about to turn 28, right? My 28th birthday, we'll do a big birthday bash. Russ is coming on. It's going to be great. We're going to want to do podcasts. It's going to be so cool. Right? But it's like I've got 28 years worth of experiences. How do I know what to tell? Russell: Yeah. It's fascinating. When I wrote the first version of the Expert Secrets, I didn't know that was the question people had. I didn't even know how to answer. It never crossed my mind. And anyway, I wrote the second version of the Expert Secrets and I'd seen it, so I'd updated it. But no one ever commented. And it wasn't until... Actually, you came to it. You came to the most recent FHAT event I did, right? The expert one? Yes, okay. Josh: Yeah, not the e-com one, but yeah. Russell: Yeah. So the first time I shared that publicly was at that event, and I remember it was fascinating because Steven Larson is probably one of the people that have studied me the most. And he raised his hand like, "Oh my gosh." He's like, "I finally understand what story I'm supposed to tell." And that was coming from Steven who like... And I was like, "Interesting." So, this is the problem I think that... And I always tell people, "Tell your backstory. Tell the origin story." So they're like, "Okay. I was born in Provo, Utah, March 8th, 1980. It was a cold night." And they, they go back to there, right? Because they think that's the story, because I tell them, "Tell your origin story." And it wasn't until at that event... Again, I think, I'm pretty sure in the second version, the hardbound version of DotCom Secrets, it's in there. But it was that event where I really said, "The story you're telling is not like your origin story. It's your origin story of how you came upon or created or figured out your framework. It's your interaction with the framework you're sharing." That's the key, right? So, when I'm talking about the perfect webinar, for example, the origin story I'm telling is not my origin story. It's my origin story discovering this framework. So, for example, I went to Armand Morin’s event and I saw people speaking on stage. I did the math, and then I spoke on stage, and I looked like an idiot. And I went back home, and then I bought Dan Kennedy's course. I realized it was wrong, and then I went through the thing. And so it's that story, it's how I learned or I earned this framework. Like how did I come up with... What was the things I went through to discover this gem that I'm bringing now from the top of the mountain down to them, saying like, "This is the thing I found out, and this is the story about how I found it. Let me share it with you." And be like, "Ooh, I want that gem. I want that gold nugget." And then they come with you on the journey to go and get that with you. So, that's the most simple way I've figured out how to explain it. I'm curious on your side, because you've explained versions of this as well, would you add to that or change it? Or what are kind of your thoughts on it? Josh: Well, so let me start by telling you the biggest struggle that I had. Like I'm talking for over a year of reading Expert Secrets, I struggled with one specific thing that I could not figure out, and it was the question that I wanted to ask you for the longest time. And then like right before we got an interview, I figured it out. I was like, "Oh my gosh." But it was I didn't understand the difference between the backstory and secret number one. And what I meant mean by that is like, to me, I'm like, "First you discover funnels, and then you teach them the framework for funnels. It's the same thing." But then you would say they're different. And I'm like, "How?" Right? Like I don't understand the difference between those two things. Now, at first I didn't understand it at all. And then kind of my first epiphany or my first breakthrough was, "Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. First the backstory introduces the thing. And then secret number one has the framework for the thing." Right? And so then that was kind of my first realization of like, "Okay, these are separate. It's one, it's the thing. And then the framework for the thing." But then I would look at your webinar and I would go, "Russell, Russell, what's your framework? Like what's the framework to build a funnel?" I'm like, "It's hook, story, offer." That's what I thought, right? I'm like, "In order to build a good funnel, it's hook, story, offer." And then I was like, "Well, maybe that's not the framework. Maybe it's add all the upsells and break the beliefs, and then go through." And I was like... But no matter what it was, it was never... Like the framework for building a successful funnel was never to go and model somebody else's funnel, and then build all the up. I'm like, that's a thing, but that's not the parts of a funnel. Right? And so I got confused because I thought the framework that I was supposed to teach in secret number one was the parts of the thing, not the framework for how to build the thing. Right? And so I think one of the biggest 'aha' moments for me is like each part of the webinar that you're doing is its own separate section, and they build off of one another, but they're also each standalone. Right? And so I thought that the backstory or that the story that I told in the backstory was the story through the entire webinar, and it's not. Right? And so whenever I would hear you say, "Well, tell the backstory about how you learned it and how you earned it," I thought it was like that was the story for the webinar, and then I had to go through and tell each thing. And then I realized that there's a separate story for each thing. Right? There was a separate story for the backstory. And by the time you're done with the backstory... And I think it was you that said it. I go back and forth. I really like how Dan Henry explained some of the things specifically when selling courses, because that was the other problem, was you were selling a software and I was like, "Well, what happens if I'm not selling a software? Oh, crap. Where does it fit in?" Right? But I think it was you that said by the time you're done with the backstory, there's a percentage of your people that are ready to buy. And I'm like, "Whoa. That's the story that I've got to figure out." And so for me, I was like, "What is the story that I have to tell, that if I were not allowed to tell secret one, secret two or secret three, people just took me at my word that what I said was the solution to their problem? What's that story that I have to tell that people would go and buy?" And I became obsessed with that, and that's what I call a master story. Because I'm like, to me... And that's why I was telling you where I was geeking out about it. I'm like, to me, once I figure out that, and I've gone through and taught all these students how to teach stories, if I focus all of my time on the three secrets, we never get anywhere. Like literally. It's ridiculous. We'll spend so much time, and then they'll do the presentation and it won't work. But if I spend 80% of my time on just the backstory and we get that right, they basically figure out the other three secrets like that. And I spend 20% of my time in the other three secrets. Russell: That's fascinating. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Because I spend both of my time doing the three secrets, because that's where people get stuck on my side. But man, the way you frame that's really cool, because I always think about... There's different markets I go after, right? So if I'm going after like a beginner market, my first thing is telling the potato gun story, because it's like, "I had a potato gun, we had an upsell, da, da, da." And for beginner, like... Josh: Which 100%, by the way, 100% of what I've done... The last like six, three months I've been doing sales calls like crazy. Whenever I mention the master story, I go, "Hey guys, do you know Russell?" They're like, "What's the master story?" I'm like, "Do you know who Russell Brunson is?" They're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Do you know the potato gun story?" 100% of the people say yes, every single time. There's not been a single person... I'm like, "That's his master story when it comes to funnels." Anyway. Russell: That's always interests me because I have a different master story if I'm going over like a more advanced audience, which is the master story of no VCs. Right? So it's like, "We're competing against InfusionSoft and all these things. They had a hundred million dollars in funding. We didn't have any money. We were broke. And so we put this thing together. Da, da, da." And they're like, "Now we get customers for free, and then they buy software." And that master story is what sells it to more of like the corporate, like the business owners who think through the world of like investing. So, that's story that I lead... If I talk about potato guns with them, they're lost, right? So again, it's like, people are like, "But I only have a story." It's like, "No, you have different stories. What are the stories that fit the audience?" Dan Kennedy 101, message to market match. Like how do you connect these things? Right? It's like here's the market I'm talking to. In fact, I think you know this. We bought Doodly.com and we bought like Brad Callen’s whole company. And these people, I didn't realize at the time, I thought they were internet marketers using software to make sales videos. But no, they were actually course creators who don't know anything about marketing. And so I went and did my webinar pitch to these people and it bombed, and it was like the worst thing ever. And I was like, "What?" And it was like, "Oh my gosh. I didn't understand the market." And so I had to change. So we rewrote it, changed the story, changed the thing to match the market we're going after. And now it's converted really well. But it was like, it's just understanding that in every situation, like figuring out, "Okay, who am I actually speaking to? So there's the market. And what's the message, the story I think I have that's going to match that to then bring them into our world?" Because I'm selling the same product, no matter what, but there's different stories that's going to hit different markets as you go through. You'll probably hear me quote a lot more Dan Kennedy in your future, as I'm going through all his courses again right now, and having the time of my life with it. So... Josh: Yeah. Well, it's just interesting, just going back to that one concept of like the first core story, the master story, the backstory of it all. I think one of the big problems that I know I ran into this is, once again, I thought the whole webinar was designed to teach and educate. Like that's when I would introduce and teach it, the whole entire process. But it's not. Like secret one, secret two, secret three are designed to educate on the thing that you introduce in the backstory. Right? And for me, with the people I work with on a pretty consistent basis, it's like they don't understand that either. And so when I go in and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. Forget about teaching them about it. You have to teach them what it is, why it's so important." And I always go back to that story when you were like no one was buying it and then you're like, "Do you understand what I went through then?" I'm like, "That! That's what you're trying to create." It's like forget the framework for it. Forget how it works. Forget why it worked for them. Forget the external objections for a second or whatever. Like what do you have to do that, if you didn't get to do anything like that, how would you convince somebody that this is the most greatest, amazing thing, and then be like, "And just take my word for it that it's going to work for you." Like, what's that story that you would tell? And for me, once I identified that was what it was, and I started working on my students with that, all the rest of the webinars and find new challenges and everything became easy. Whether it was Catherine Jones when we worked with her, whether it was Brad Gibbon, casual tactics, like all of them, it was like, once we figured out that, then all the rest of the things fell into place. Russell: Yeah. It's fascinating because the reason why I bombed when I first started versus why I started studying dance stuff, is that realization of just like, "They haven't bought into the fact that they want to funnel yet or that they want weight loss or whatever the thing is." Like your only goal during the webinar or the challenge or whatever is to convince them that this is the vehicle that's going to be the most likely successful to get up on that mountain and get the result that they've been looking for. Because they've been looking for the result for a long time, right? I think Katlyn said the average woman goes on eight diets a year. Right? So it's like, now that they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose weight." It's not like this, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to make money. Oh my gosh, I'm going to..." Like, they already want the result. They tried three or four other things. You're trying to convince them that your presentation or your challenge or whatever is to convince them that of all the different potential opportunities, that your new opportunity is the one that's most likely to get them success. And if they buy into that, then you can take them on the journey. But you start teaching around the gate. You're trying to take them on this journey, and they're like, "Wait, but there's like 10 other options. I don't think you're the right... I don't even know if you're the right option. I have no idea." So your job and your role is 100% only there to convince them that this is the most likely thing that's going to give them the success they're looking for. And yeah, then you won. Then you can bring them into world. Now you can serve them. Now you can change their life. But until you've sold them on the fact that your vehicle is the one that is most likely to give success, you can't serve them. You can't change their life. You can't do anything. And so that's what we got to become really good at is that transition. So, anyway, so fun. Josh: All right. Well, that'll wrap up the story episode there. I think that was really, really good. I think we got a lot accomplished. Russell: We should go, another time, or next time you're a voice, we should do like a half-day live with everybody on like the master story. That'd be fascinating to go deeper just on that, without the context of having to have all the rest of the webinar things. I'd love to geek out with you deeper on that. So, there's the thought. If you guys want more of that, you got to let me and Josh know, and maybe next time we're around some UFC fight or some fake YouTube boxing fight, we'll plan something fun like that. Because that’d be really cool to go deep on that. Josh: That fake YouTube boxer fight, that's 5 and 0, right? Oh, man. All right. Russell: All right. Thanks, you guys, for listening. If you enjoyed this, please let us know. Tag us on social. Tweet us out. Instagram us. YouTube... I don't know. All the different places. Josh: Don't tweet us. Russell won't tweet at you. He'll just fake like your tweets. Instagram? Instagram. Russell: Tweet at Josh, and then I'll share it. Josh: Yeah. Russell: My team will share it. Anyhow, let us know. We're enjoying doing these, and hopefully you guys love them as well. And the last way, if you want to help grow this podcast, please just tell other people about it. And yeah, that's all I got. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Josh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russell and special guest Josh Forti dive deep into funnels,  storytelling, and building your own reality. Find out how to break free of what’s expected, how to create your own rules, build your own world, and be OK with being different. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. Today, I've got two things for you. Number one, I got kind of a cold so if I sound a little funny, that's why. Number two, is you guys loved our last three podcast episodes with Josh Forti, so we thought we should do it again. Today, we jumped on a call and we recorded three more episodes for you, and they've been a lot of fun. The first episode was all about just kind of... It was an interesting conversation, and I think it took us a while to get exactly to the point. But by the end, the end of of it wrapped with some really cool thoughts and ideas and I think some clarifications that'll help you guys a lot. But it was all about I'm in this world of funnels, and how has that affected my world perspective, my world view and, everything else happening around me? And how does that work for you with the thing that you're most passionate and most obsessed with? And so I think you guys will enjoy this conversation. With that said, I'll queue up the theme song. When we come back, you have a chance to listen in on a conversation with me and Josh Forti. What's up, everybody? It's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. A little while ago, Josh Forti and I did a couple episodes. We've done this three times now technically. This is the fourth, but we did an episode a little while ago, just to see how you guys liked it. And the feedback was amazing. I got tons of good feedback. I think you did as well, right? You saw everyone. Josh Forti: I got tons. I sent you some of them. We convinced somebody to start a podcast over it. Russell: Because of the... Yes. Josh: Because of the podcast. Russell: ... podcast. We are having little podcast babies now because of what happened last time we hung out, and I'm pumped. We're jumping back in. We got three episodes of recording today. I know the title of the topics, but that's about it. I don't know where we're going, the direction, but I'm pumped and excited and just grateful for you, man, doing these. I really enjoyed it last time. I left afterwards pumped and on fire and had a ton of energy, so I'm excited for this. Josh: Heck yeah. That's awesome. Well, are you sick? Russell: Yes. I have a little stuffy nose, so I apologize in advance if I sound... My voice sounds deeper though, so I sound more masculine which is kind of cool. But yeah, definitely got a little bit of a cold. Josh: Oh, man. As long as it's not COVID. Russell: Oh, yeah. No, I did that. We're good. The antibodies are flowing through my body, so I'm pretty good there. Josh: Heck yeah. Russell: Well, what's the plan today? What are we talking about for this episode? Love to get kind of- Josh: Are we doing intros or are we just jumping in? Russell: This is the intro. I'll do intros. Josh: This is it, we're in. We're rocking and rolling. Russell: We're live. Let's go. Josh: All right, all right. Let's dive in. Dude, interestingly enough, as I went back and I started going... By the way, I actually listened to all three of our episodes, even though we did them. I actually went back and listen, because I'm that geeky nerd. I was talking to one of my friends. We were sending VOXs back and forth to each other and he's like, "I just listed to my vox back to you." And I'm like, "I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that." And he's like, "Oh, no, you are the only one. I just did that one time." I'm like, "Crap. Dang it." I go back through it. I listen to VOXs and I listen to podcasts. I'm trying to figure out how I could've made them better. But what's interesting is I wanted to take this one a little bit of a different route today, to kind of kick things off. Because normally, I'd say there's two types of podcasts. There's educational podcasts, which is you're talking on a very specific topic, and you're trying to educate people on that. And then there's entertainment podcasts. Entertainment is much more... Maybe it could be educational still, but it's not designed to educate you on one specific thing, and then break all the beliefs around that thing. And then do the whole perfect webinar thing on a podcast episode. Whatever. But rather, just kind have an open conversation. And I want to open this one up, talking specifically about funnels. And not funnels and how you build them, but I want to know is funnels a worldview for you? And what I mean by that is right now, I'm really, really big into storytelling. That's kind of my thing that I'm geeking out about, is how to tell amazing stories. And I call it the master story. That's the core thing that I'm trying to figure out right now, is the master story for me is what's the one story I got to get people to believe? After they believe that story, they'll do whatever I want them to do. It's the big domino statement of stories. But as I've done that, I've kind of gone out and everything in my life now revolves around stories. I'm like, "Oh, story there, story there. Oh, that's the story? Oh, that's the story." And my whole life now is just everything is stories. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets, and you wrote those books and everything like that. You talk about kind of building this world and this identity, and bringing everybody in. And so I'm curious for you, where do funnels play into your life besides just marketing? Is this a worldview? Is this a lens upon which you view the world? Russell: Everything. Yes, for sure it is. It's interesting. I still remember back when I first got in this game, and I was learning marketing, and then I started studying Dan Kennedy's stuff and started... And I remember starting after I got that, some of the initial inputs of this world. What's the Matrix? The red pill or the blue pill. I took the pill and all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I see the world differently." And for me, it was fascinating. I started loving, I became obsessed. In fact, you can ask my wife this. We first got married, we listened to the radio and commercials would come on and she'd want to change. I'm like, "No, no, no. What are they doing? Did they do a good job did, they do a bad job, and how could they have done it better?" I started geeking out on that and I started watching more infomercials. I started watching as you go down the highway and you see the billboards. "Okay. That billboard, did it make me do anything, did it not? Was there a call to action, was there not? If there was, what did... " I'd get my phone out and I call the number and like, "What happened? What was the sales pitch?" And I started seeing behind the curtain of what was happening, and I became obsessed seeing that. And I remember, this is probably a little bit prior to this, but after I started seeing things I started realizing how things made me feel. I remember in high school, I was the wrestler, as you know. and I was into my health and fitness. I didn't understand it back then, but I do remember Bill Phillips had a magazine called Muscle Media. This is probably way before your time. But it was the first muscle building magazine that wasn't... All the other ones were these dudes who were just steroided out. And Muscle Media was the dudes and the ladies in it was who you want to look like. That guys looks amazing. And he had a supplement company called EAS he launched, and so I got into supplements and got into Bill Phillips. I got into his world, where I was reading his magazine articles and buying his supplementsm and it was cool. But I remember I wanted to buy some... I can't remember what the new supplement was. And there was a GNC close to my house.And so I remember jumping my bike, riding down to GNC, being so excited to buy a supplement. And I walked through the door, and as soon as I walked through the door of the GNC, the person came out and was like, "Hey, how can I help you?" And I'm like, “uh…”, and kind of freaked out. I was like, "Oh, I'm just looking." And I got all nervous and then I kind of wandered away, and then it felt like the person was kind of following me and everything. And I remember I came there cause I wanted to buy something, but I felt so uncomfortable, excuse me, that eventually I just snuck out and I left. And I was like, "I didn't get the thing." Because I felt so uncomfortable in the process that even though I came there with my money in hand, ready to buy something, I didn't because I didn't like the process. And I noticed, I don't know if you ever go into a GNC. As soon as you walk in, they always come and they pounce on you. And even to this day when I walk into GNC, it's one of my favorite stores. But I know the initial anxiety of the person pouncing on me asking if I can help them, or what I'm looking for. I'm like, "I don't know what I'm looking for. I want to literally read the back of every label of every bottle here. I'll come to you if I need help, but don't come and pounce on me." And I started realizing that and I started thinking, "If this was my story, how would I have wanted to be approached?" And I started thinking the script. And I started thinking if I came in the door and the person says something like, "Hey, welcome to GNC today. I'm over here. If you need anything, let me know." And it was more of a deflect, I would've felt more comfortable. I would've walked around, then I would've felt comfortable coming back the person. And I just started thinking through that. Anyway, that was before I learned marketing. I remember feeling that way, and as I started studying marketing I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I now know why I felt that way. The script was wrong and the process was wrong." And I started thinking through things more like that. And I'm sure it was annoying for my family. We'd go to a restaurant and I would notice how did the server do things, and what did they say? And it started opening up for me. In fact, my junior year in high school during the summer, I got a serving job and I was serving tables. And I remember, because I would split test different things to see what would give me more tips. If I said this to a person versus this. And I remember in fact, this is a 17 year old kid who's stuck on himself. I'd roll my sleeves. "If my sleeves are rolled up and they see more of my arms, would it be higher?" And literally would split test this thing to try to figure out how to increase them. And it's just weird. That was when I was young, and definitely it's messed me up nowadays, because it's hard for me when I see every ad, everything. I want to go deep into things, and I do sometimes but sometimes it takes me long rabbit holes. I don't know if that answers the question or not. Josh: Okay. Well, I want to kind of dive further down deeper into that, because I want to expand beyond just marketing as well. Because I think any of us as marketers when we have the light bulb turn on, you take the red pill or whatever it is. I remember for me, I had that first experience with money. I grew up in a very small, small, small town. The two towns collectively combined had 750 people in them, and one bank and a gas station. Very, very small world. And then I started learning about money, and I'll never forget the day that it clicked for me. I was actually out in... I had already moved to Nebraska, and I started to realize how money flowed. And I got done reading this book, and I remember I picked up the phone and I called one of my friends who had been teaching me about money. I'm like, "Dude, I get it now. I get everywhere around. I can't not see how money is flowing and where it works." I'm like this, and now I have all these questions about it. And so I totally understand when your lights come on, you start seeing the whole world through that, for that specific thing. But I want to know what about other areas of your life, and how funnels and your viewpoint of funnels has affected that. And what I'm trying to get at and understand, is you talk a lot about in Expert Secrets, we're building this identity, we're building this community, we're building this movement, this calling. And what's interesting for me I've noticed, is that when I first got into this space, I was so new that the preconceived notions of what people should do or should not do did not affect me. Because I didn't know anything. I was like, "I know I'm an idiot." people were like, "You're doing that wrong?" I'm like, "Probably." And there was no ego in the way of it. But then as I grew, I thought there were certain ways that I had to think, or there were certain things that I had to do. And then if I broke free from the mold that everybody else was doing, then somehow that was wrong. And I struggled with that. Thankfully for me, I didn't stay in there. But what helped me get out of it, is I gave myself permission and I literally was like, "I'm doing my own world over here. Everybody else, they can have whatever it is that they want. They can make more money than me, that's fine. I'm building this own little thing." And when I envisioned myself stepping into this world, then I was allowed to make my own rules. And so the rules had to follow everything else, but people would be like, "Josh, it's super weird that you think about everything in marketing." And I'm like, "But that's my world." And so everything about my life, from what I buy, to where I live, to who I hung out with, was all shaped around that. And for a while, that was weird. And whenever I would go to my friends it was like, "You're weird." And I struggled with that. But then once I gave myself kind of permission to be like, "Well, that's just literally how I think. That's my world, and it's okay to be different." That really freed me. And so I'm curious. How has funnels shaped your world outside of only marketing? And what would you tell somebody? Would you tell someone it's okay to like view the world through whatever their new opportunity is, in all aspects of life? Does that make sense? Russell: I think so. It's interesting, because I know you're trying to get outside of marketing, but it's fascinating because in my vision of the world, like everything is marketing. Josh: That's what I'm saying though. That's what I'm saying. Russell: When I meant my wife- Josh: How has that affected relationships? When you are dealing with a problem in your family, do like go like, "What's the funnel for this?" Does that make sense? Russell: How do we craft the story, the pitch, the thing. But it's true, because I think about when I met my wife. When I met her, there were multiple people who... She was the prospect and multiple people all competing for her attention. It was like, "Okay. I've got to create a better offer. I'm not the best looking guy, so I got to... What are the tools I have to increase the value of what I have to be more attractive to her?" And things like that. With my kids right now, it's tough because my kids have got so many distractions and there's things that are way cooler than dad. I'm always trying to think through that lens of, "Okay." Josh: Wait, there's people cooler and Russell Brunson? What? Russell: You could never be a prophet in your hometown, they say. You're never cool to your own kids. But it's tough though, because I'm competing against all of... For my kids, the rappers that are in their ears, and they're listening to all these people who... That part of the world. And they got their friends and they got these... There's so many things we're competing against. It's like, "Okay. Well, how do I take them on this journey to be able to help?" And you talked about universe building, which is true. In fact, I'm working on a project with Dan Kennedy right now, and it's all about that concept of universe building, and things like that. And you look at the big companies that have done it successfully, that's what they did. Walt Disney built this universe. In fact, I've listened to the interviewed me and Dan did on Funnel Hacking Live, and he talked about Walt Disney and Hefner were basically the same business. He's like, "One had bunnies and one had had rabbits or whatever. Or one had mice, one had bunnies." But it's the same business, right? They both had a universe that people came into. And I think about that. We're doing the same thing. You create a universe for your customers. That's a lot of what the Expert Secrets and everything is about, creating this customer universe. But it's true in your office with your team, it's true with your family, it's true with your relationships. You're kind of trying to craft this environment that makes people first off want to be there and to be part of it, and then to persuade people to hopefully get the things you're looking for. All of us are in a persuasion business, even we don't want to admit it. And people are like, "I don't persuade people. I don't manipulate people." But you are. What do you want to eat for dinner tonight? You got to persuade the other person. What movie do you want to go to? Are we going to go out tonight, or are we going to sit home on the couch? You're always in this thing of persuasion. And if you look at any kind of sales environment, is the number one. The biggest, one of the most important things when you're trying to sell somebody something, is the, the environment. The universe that you put them in. It's the reason why if I do a pitch on a virtual event, where somebody is at their own home, in their own environment, and I'm giving them a glimpse in my environment. I can convert and I can sell people. But I do the exact same presentation at Funnel Hacking Live in a room where I control the environment, they're in my universe. My sales were 5-6X, even though it's the exact same presentation, exact same everything because I'm controlling the environment. And so my home, same thing. How do I control this environment, my home? And how do I structure things? And how do we set the same things? You think about in the ClickFunnels ecosystem, we've got these awards. We got the Two Comma Club awards, Two Comma Club X. We have things like that. How do we create these things for people to strive towards inside of our families? Colette and I did that a couple years ago. We were trying to figure out what's our family goals. Do we have a goal? What does that look like? What's something that we can collectively all work towards together? And in the Mormon church, one of the biggest goals is you want to get married in the temple. But to get married in the temple, you have to be living worthily. There's all these things to do. And so as a family, we set a goal. How do you explain it? If my kids get married in the temple, their younger siblings won't be able to go, because they're not old enough to be able to go into the temple to actually witness the marriage. The goal we set as a family, we set a goal of when Nora... Because Nora is the youngest. When Nora gets married, the goal is we'd love her to get married in the temple, and we want all of our family to be there. Which means all of our family has lived in a way where we're worthy to be there together as the family. That became our family goal, and it's this thing we're all shooting towards. And it's fun, because now when I'm having family conversations with my kids, it's like, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing that." It's like, "Hey, these are things that are keeping us away from our family goal." We want to do this thing in 10 years from now, 15 years ago, Nora... But the way you're living, you're not going to be able to do that. And it's less of me trying to tell them what to do, as much as this is the goal we collectively set as a family. This is what we're trying to get to. Same thing in Marketing, we're trying to get the Two Comma Club award, cool. You can go listen to forty other gurus if you want, but this is the path. This is the process. We can get you there, but if you're distracted... It's just kind of a similar thing where, you set the things inside the universe, the goals, the steps. And hopefully, everyone... Not that they will or that they want to. Maybe my kids decide they hate the universe and they want to break out of it, and that can happen, too. People don’t think funnels are cool, because they don't like me. I talk too fast or I'm annoying or whatever, and they enter different a different universe, but that's okay. Josh: Yeah. And I think entering a different universe, I think maybe what I'm trying to get at is I grew up, once again, super small town. Super small world, and I just figured there was a way the world worked. Singular. That's how it worked. And as I've grown up, I was striving to figure that out. I'm like, "What's the way the world works?" And I get out there and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. There's five million different ways the world works." And depending upon whose world old that you're in. And so I was watching the football game last night. We had it on. It was the Steelers and the Vikings. I don't know. By the way, I know you don't watch football, but I'm going to make a prediction on here for all my football fans out there. Patriots are going to the Super Bowl versus Tom Brady. It's going to be Tom Brady and the Bucks versus Bill Belichick and the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Anyway, we're watching it last night and they have this documentary that's coming out. Do you know who John Madden is? Russell: Yeah. Just from the video game. Josh: Yeah. They have this whole thing on Madden and his whole life. And it's coming out, this documentary, and they do little clips, and there's all these different little people talking about it. And they're like, "This dude, you couldn't be around him and not love football. Because he just exuded football in every aspect of his life. At the dinner table, around his family, around his friends, at the... Football, football, football, football." And it got me thinking, because I'm preparing for this interview last night. And I'm like, "That guy's whole life was football. That's how it came about. He couldn't imagine a reality where football didn't exist. "Yet there's somebody else out. There's millions, billions of people out in this world who they never heard of or think about or want anything to do with football." And so here's a guy where his whole life revolves around football. All of his analogies, all of his stories, all of his strategies, everything was football all. And then I was like, "Oh, I wonder if that's what it's like living with Russell." Everything is funnels. And it's like funnels, funnels, funnels, funnels, funnels. I feel like sometimes as entrepreneurs, I know I struggled with this for a while, and I struggled with this a lot more when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. When I was still trying to figure out my voice and kind of everything like that. But I'm like, "I just can't be the X guy, because that would be weird. That's not how reality works. That's not how life works. You don't just get to just focus on all of this." But I feel like it is. And I feel like you don't necessarily have to be a single thing guy, but I feel like you can. In the sense of... And that's why I'm trying to get at with you, is I feel like you've gone into this world and you've found the thing that works. And you've said, "Hey, listen, basically, in life you have to know where it is that you're going and how it is that you're going to get there." That's essentially in life, and that's kind of my core premise of everything. I'm like, "I don't care how you live in life." But I'm like, "If you don't know where you're going and how you're going to get there, your life is going to suck. You're not going to have a very fulfilled life." And so I feel like for you, you've figured out, "Okay. Wherever I want to get, this is the vehicle I'm going to use." And you've built an entire reality and universe around that. Yeah? Russell: Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting though, too, because I actually was on a call last night with Stu McLaren at their prediction college here, and he was asking my predictions for the future. And it's interesting because yes, funnels is the thing. It's my lens. And that's what people come to me. It's the lens they come through. But what I think is fascinating, and I see this with... In fact, I told Stu, I'm like, "There's an evolution. People were experts for a while and then they became influencers." And I think the next phase, it won't stick. People will still call themselves influencers, because it sounds cool and they feel the significance of that. But I think the next phase is people are going to become curators more so. Which is someone comes to me for funnels, but it's interesting because my last inner circle meeting, people pay 50 grand to be in the room. There's 100 people in this room and they're here because they want to learn funnels from Russell. We're talking about funnels and then we open for Q&A. And guess how many funnel questions came through? Zero. The questions were, "Russell, I came to you for funnels, but I trust you. I like you." And they didn't say this, but this is what happened, is they wanted to figure out how I curate. They wanted me to curate other thoughts for them. "I trust you in this, therefore what do you think about religion?" And they want me to take all my years of curation of all the ideas like, "This is what I believe." Or they're like, "How is your family successful?" And so they asked me these other questions. And I was telling Stu last night. I'm like, "Stu, you're the membership guy. People come from your memberships. But after they come in, that's what brings them into the door, but then they're coming because they want your curation of other ideas." Dan Usher. I think Dan on our team. It was fascinating, because his favorite band is Rufus or something like that. I don't really know the band that well. But he's obsessed with them and their music, and so he follows them, he loves them and everything. And he just bought his first house out here in Boise, so he needed to get art on the wall. He's like, "Well, I love Rufus. I trust them. They've curated their favorite art." He went and bought everything that Rufus ever said they like for art and put it on his wall. He's like, "Cool. Because I trust them, therefore I want this." And then he bought the furniture that they have in their house, because he trusts their opinion on this and other things. And so I think it's with Madden, I'm sure the football is what brings people in. And they come in there, they sit at the table for that. But then if they like him and they connect with him, then they want to know, "What else do you know?” I want to go down these other rabbit holes with you, because I trust you and I trust your opinion. I trust because you've already kind of done that." I think for me, that's probably more so, is they come in from one thing, but then if they connect with you then they want to dive deep on all the other pieces, the things that you find fascinating. Josh: Yeah. It's almost like they need the in to step into your universe, and then you get to build the rest of the universe out for them simply because you've built trust in that one area. Russell: Yeah. And what's fascinating. If you rewind back in my history 15 years ago, it was tough because when I was trying to create my universe, I didn't know that's what it was called. But it was funny. If you look at the landscape in our industry back then, it was interesting. Jeff Walker was the launch guy, Frank Kern was the mass control guy, Filsaime was the butterfly marketing person. Everyone had a thing where they were the best. Brad Fallon was SEO, and then you had Perry Marshall was PPC, and everyone had their thing. And I came in, I was good at all of this. I'm like, "I'm the guy who do everything." And I'd go to events like, "Cool, what do you do?" I'm like, "What do you need? I'm good at copywriting, and I can do all the things." And people are like, "Oh, okay." But then they'd go and they'd sign up for Jeff for launch. And I'm like, "I can do launch. I've done tons of launches." Or they'd go to whoever for copywriting, John Carlton for copywriting. I'm like, "God, I've done all these things." But there wasn't a thing. It wasn't until I specialize in. "Okay. Funnels is the thing." And it was a narrow focus where people could attach a thing in their head like, "Oh, Russell is the guy who does funnels." And they do that. But they come into the... That's the doorway that brings them into my world. But inside the funnel world, what is there? You can launch a funnel. There's copywriting, there's traffic driving, there's all these other things. But I had to bring them in through a channel they could connect with, they could label me with. You know what I mean? But after they're in my universe, there's all sorts of stuff I can do with him. Josh: I feel like that right there was the core of what I was trying to get after. I think a lot of people struggle with or are afraid to claim their thing, because they're like, "I can't just claim it." Funnels. Russell could claim funnels because that was a thing, but was it a thing before Russell? Was there a funnel... You are the one that came in and nobody came to you and was like, "Russell, you're the funnel guy. Go." You were the one that had to decide that. You were the one that had to come in and be like… Russell: And it's fascinating, because I was the only one back then talking about it. There was a bunch of people. In fact, I remember Todd and I started building ClickFunnels. And I remember about that time it was T&C, so it was the T&C before we launched ClickFunnels. And we got T&C, we were sitting in the audience, and Todd and I are mapping things out, and we're talking back and forth. And the entire T&C, that event was about funnels. And so Ryan was on stage, Perry was on stage talking about funnels they developed. "This is the funnel framework for all funnels." They sold the $18,000 funnel coaching program and half the room signed up, and all this stuff. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh. That's what we're trying to go, but they just took it from us." And then it was crazy. After that T&C, then everyone was talking about funnels. And it was funny, because the next week everyone became a funnel consultant. All of a sudden, 2,000 little funnel consultants were running around the internet talking about funnels. And I remember Mike Filsaime had done something showing behind the scenes of one of his funnels, and I remember somebody else got mad. I'm like, "We're the funnel person. You shouldn't be talking about this us." And I remember Mike and him were fighting back and forth. I was kind of watching this and I was like, "We have this software coming out called ClickFunnels. And I have this book I'm writing that's almost done called Dotcom Secrets, which is all about funnels." And so I was stepping in this thing where there was a whole bunch of noise around this topic, and I could have been like, "Who am I? I'm not qualified." Whatever. But instead I was like, "You know what? This is what I'm obsessed with. And I'm just going to do my thing, and I don't care about everybody else." And so I just did my thing and came out there, and there were people who... I can't tell the actual stories, but there were people who were upset. "You shouldn't be talking about this, Russel. This is so and so's thing." And then at TNC the next year, there was some weird comments from stage made about stuff. Because in fact, somebody said from stage, "Because of what we talked about last year at T&C, Russell created ClickFunnels because of us." And they gave them credit for this thing. And it was just this craziness. But man, we were the only ones who took it and that were consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent. I'm seven, almost eight years into the consistency, which is how you define the path. That's how you get the... You look at Jeff Walker, who's been talking about product launches for 20 years. Therefore, he's the product launch guy. People try to come dethrone him, but he's been consistently talking about the same thing for so long that you can't. And so the biggest thing is picking the platform, and then you just triple down on it and you keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it. And eventually, you will rise the Victor. But most people don't have the longterm, the patients to keep just drilling in for long enough to make it stick. Josh: Yeah. And I think that a lot of times, at least in my experience, and it could be different for other people. But a lot of times, it's because you're just not confident enough in it. The only thing that's going to be the difference of whether or not it's going to stick or not, is whether or not you're confident enough to follow through. That's not necessarily true for every single product universally. Sometimes the market doesn't fit, and sometimes there really is... If you tried to launch a competitor to iPhone right now, you're probably not going to make it. But generally speaking, especially in our world with funnels and experts and a lot of online influencer marketing and things of that nature. It's basically whoever sticks at it the longest and then creates the clearest, simplest stories, the clearest, simplest frameworks, and the easiest way for people to be able to get results with it, are the ones that are actually going to make it and follow through. Russell: Yeah. That’s the game, and it’s so much fun. Josh: All right. Well, I'm ready to move onto topic number two here. We're about at time. Russell: All right. Josh: You ready to rock and roll? Russell: We'll wrap it up. Thank you guys for listening. If you enjoyed this, let us know. Otherwise, we'll never do this again, so if you loved it, tag me and Josh on Facebook, Instagram, wherever you guys do stuff. If you tweet, I probably won't see it there, but tweet it up and let us know, and we'll come back and do some more of this stuff. Learn more about your ad choices. 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