The Russell Brunson Show

In the recent "Ecomm Vs Expert Smackdown" event, a question about imposter syndrome was posed by Ben Moote. Russell Brunson introduces the Q&A segment from the event on his Marketing Secrets podcast, highlighting the relevance of the topic for everyone in their career journey.Ben shares his struggle with imposter syndrome, expressing how deeply ingrained beliefs of scarcity and unworthiness have affected his opportunities and relationships. He seeks advice on overcoming this negativity to move forward.Russell responds by acknowledging his own experiences with imposter syndrome, revealing that he still faces it despite his success. He emphasizes the importance of shifting focus from oneself to serving others. Russell shares his personal coping mechanism of prayer and focusing on the audience's needs rather than his own insecurities.Alison Prince recounts her initial fear of public speaking and how she visualizes passing her fear to someone else, like Russell, before going on stage. She shares how this technique has helped her overcome her nerves.Russell adds that having support systems like momentum coaches can be crucial in dealing with imposter syndrome and other limiting beliefs. These coaches provide guidance and help entrepreneurs navigate their challenges.Alison underscores the value of momentum coaches in providing support and guidance tailored to entrepreneurs' needs. She shares her gratitude for the opportunity to work with individuals who are willing to take risks and make positive changes in their lives.The conversation highlights the ongoing nature of personal growth and the importance of having support systems in place to navigate challenges and achieve success in entrepreneurship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a recent episode of his podcast, Russell Brunson discusses the pursuit of worldly goals and shares a powerful message he received from Brooke Castillo on the topic.Russell begins by introducing Brooke Castillo, an entrepreneur who has built a successful coaching business. He highlights her impact in certifying coaches and praises the quality of individuals who go through her program.He then delves into the topic of pursuing worldly goals, acknowledging the challenges associated with it, especially within certain cultural and religious contexts. Russell reflects on his own journey and how hiring a coach helped him align his business goals with his spiritual mission.Russell shares Brooke's message, emphasizing the importance of worldly goals in personal evolution. He highlights how setting ambitious goals requires overcoming self-doubt, fear, and societal pressures, ultimately leading to personal growth.Brooke's message underscores the idea that individuals are inherently worthy and capable of pursuing their desires. She encourages embracing discomfort as a sign of progress and emphasizes the significance of pursuing big goals.Russell relates this message to biblical teachings, particularly the parable of the talents, which illustrates the importance of utilizing one's gifts and talents to their fullest potential.He concludes by affirming that individuals are called to pursue greatness, even if they feel unworthy or unprepared. Russell encourages listeners to step into their potential and embrace their desires, acknowledging that the journey of personal growth is ongoing.Overall, Russell's discussion highlights the transformative power of pursuing worldly goals and the importance of aligning personal aspirations with one's spiritual journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode Russell dives deeper into goal setting, which goals to pick, why to pick them, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing---Transcript---Russell's podcast episode is packed with valuable insights on setting and achieving goals. He breaks it down into two main concepts: the Hall of Fame goal and the Super Bowl goal.The Hall of Fame goal is like a long-term vision, reflecting who you want to become and be remembered as. Russell emphasizes the importance of identifying role models or mentors whose characteristics you admire and aspire to embody. By setting this overarching goal, you establish a direction for your personal growth and contribution to others.On the other hand, the Super Bowl goal is more tangible and time-bound. It's about achieving specific milestones or accomplishments that contribute to your overall vision. Russell suggests applying the concept of definiteness of purpose to these goals, meaning having a clear and specific plan to achieve them.Throughout the episode, Russell emphasizes the importance of having a definite purpose, whether it's in personal growth, business, or contribution to others. He also touches on the significance of understanding and meeting your basic needs, as outlined by Tony Robbins' six human needs framework, before focusing on growth and contribution.Overall, Russell encourages listeners to think deeply about their goals, both in terms of who they want to become and what they want to achieve, and to approach goal-setting with clarity, purpose, and a strategic plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Check out this fax that Dan Kennedy sent to his Diamond Members talking about Batman, success, and a whole bunch of other really cool things. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Hey, what's up everyone? This is Russell Brunson and I'm excited. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. Right now, I'm working on a project with Dan Kennedy. And for years, he used to send a weekly fax to his diamond members. And right now, we're putting all of those into a book. And there's a bunch of cool things happening with it. It's insane. But one of the faxes, I just stumbled upon it and the title caught me. I had to read it. And then it was so good, I wanted to read it to you. So the title of this fax from Dan Kennedy is called, Parables of The Batman. All right, so like I said, I'm working on this project with Dan Kennedy. We're putting together all his faxes. People used to pay $297 a month to be a diamond member. They still do, actually. Sorry. And in that program for the five, or six, or seven-year period of time, Dan would send them a weekly fax. And I found in the archives all these faxes. They're insanely cool. Dan's thoughts on whatever he was thinking about that week, it was literally fun. And so we're actually putting them together into a book that eventually, we'll be giving to all diamond members. So if you want more of these, you need to upgrade to become a magnetic marketing diamond member here in the future. That'll be the bribe, is giving everyone this book of all of Dan's faxes from a seven-year window. But anyway, as I'm going through the book, I found this one. Obviously, you guys know I'm a superhero fan. I'm a Batman fan. I'm all the things. And so this fax, as I was scrolling through the book before we sent it out to print, the title of this fax was called, Parables of The Batman. And so, of course, I had to read it. And it was so cool, I wanted to read it to you, too. So here we go. This is in Dan's words from his fax. He said, "I finally got around to watching The Dark Knight Rises, the third, final and only disappointing film in the trilogy produced by Christopher Nolan. In it, there is a hell-hole of a prison deep beneath the earth's surface, featuring the ultimate cruelty, impossible hope. There's a tall tower carved out of the rock, rising several stories to the surface. Blue skies visible when standing at its bottom, looking straight up. Prisoners are free to attempt climbing up and out. And they do from time to time, with a rope tied around their waist to catch them bungee-style before they fall to their death. There's a legend known to all the suffering prisoners passed from one generation to the next about the only person who ever succeeded at this escape, a child." "It is in this subterraneal hell that a crippled Batman, i.e., Bruce Wayne, has been left to die. After a brutally-difficult, primitive-managed rehab, he attempts and fails in this escape. Not once, but twice. At point of surrender, an aged prisoner, who has befriended him, tells him the secret of the child who did successfully clamor up the entire tower and escaped. The child climbed without the rope. The weight of the rope, more the embedded thought created by wearing the rope, that one is going to fall is just enough burden to ensure failure. The old man says that to have a chance you must climb without the rope. This is a remarkable success parable buried deep in the film that few will notice." "Most people try to achieve various lofty ambitions, perhaps the greatest of which is freedom and autonomy, while still dragging contrary conventions, industry norms, counterproductive beliefs, slothful behaviors, et cetera, tied to them by a heavy rope. The higher they try to climb, the heavier the burden of the rope. I first taught this in the early 1980s as a simplified cycle cybernetic concept, in terms of the importance of a bountiful garden and pulling weeds, not just planting flowers. I'm often asked that, to be super successful must I lose my friends? If your friends are unambitious, or delusional, or toxic, then yes, they must be left behind. You must sever your ties to all the ordinary ideas, and behaviors, and business practices of the masses, of the majorities. You must climb without the rope." "The Batman himself is a parable. He is unlike most other costumed superheroes. As I pointed out before, Superman is an alien from outer space and that is the source of his superhuman powers. Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider, et cetera. Most superheroes come from a distant planet and are gifted powers by unworldly beings, the Green Lantern, for example, or science experiments gone wrong or accidents like spideys. Few have no superpowers at all, but simply decided to make themselves into superheroes. The Batman is a creature entirely of Bruce Wayne's decision. If the genealogy of such things interests you, the predecessor closest is the Shadow. Further, The Batman made himself into a master detective and an extraordinary athlete, martial artist, fighter and an intimidating personality." "Anyway, there's probably a rope tied around your waist. Perhaps thinned by use, skinny as twine. Perhaps thicker and heavier than the huge rope tied to the steamship's anchors. You might want to pull on it and examine all that's tied to the other end. Shedding dead weight eases the speed of the journey. Oh, and the heaviest dead weights are never things or people. They are thoughts and beliefs." Oh man, you got Dan Kennedy talking about Batman, and superheroes, and personal development. What more could you want? All in one amazing fax. So any of you guys who eventually, someday get the Dan Kennedy fax book, The Batman fax is on page number 79. Hope you guys enjoyed this one. And I'm going to keep bringing you guys cool stuff I learn from Dan. Thanks, everybody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The secrets of transforming your identity into an actual obsession. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Series Podcast. Today, we're going to be going even a little bit deeper, talking about identity. All right, I know I talked about this stuff a lot, but it's in my head on my mind a lot. I think sometimes we talk about a topic and then we're like, oh yeah, I know what that is. So the topic we're talking about is identity shifting again. And I've talked about it in so many different ways. Like we talked at it from a marketing standpoint, like with your audience, you've got to create an identity shift if you truly want them to move and follow. In goal setting, we talked about you have to have an identity shift if you want to actually move and change. But I had a weird realization over the last probably 48 hours or so. So those who don't know, my life right now, and we're in the middle of wrestling season. I help coach the kids high school team. So every day at 2:30, I leave the office, race over to the school, and I coach. And it's kind of weird, because I'm not the head coach. I'm there just kind of wrestle my kids, and help people, and whatever. But it brings back all the memories of when you were doing it, right? When you were wrestling, and when you were competing. And for me, it was like, man, wrestling was my life. Like it was the only thing that mattered. There was nothing else. There wasn't like a number two or number three. It was like wrestling and then nothing else. And it's interesting because I watched the kids now, we've got some really good wrestlers on our team, but I think it was two days ago, maybe three days ago, I had this realization. I said there's a difference between people who are wrestling and someone who is a wrestler. And I was looking, because most of the people on the team are here and they're wrestling. They come to practice every day, they wrestle. Then they go to the matches, they go to the tournaments. They do stuff and they wrestle. They're wrestling. But there's a difference between just wrestling and then those who are wrestlers. Right? And it was interesting, because last night my high school I grew up in, it's Hillcrest High School in Sandy, Utah. Every year there's this rivalry against Brighton High School. We hate Brighton. And Brighton's the big... It's Hillcrest versus Brighton. And I think it was like 40 or 50 years ago, they started this thing called the Battle of the Ax. And so they had this huge Ax. And each year, whoever wins the dome gets to keep the Ax. And so when I was a senior in high school, we had lost the ax like 13 or 14 years in a row. And our senior year, we were a really, really good team. And my senior year we actually won the Battle of the Ax. And what's crazy cool is last night, Hillcrest won the Battle of the Ax again, for the first time in 24 years. First time since I was a senior in high school. And so I saw that on Facebook, someone posted it. So I got all excited. And so I started going back through all my old video files. And I found videos of me wrestling in the Battle of the Ax. And then us winning the ax, and us going crazy, and videos of the ax and like all these things. And so it's kind of fun, I went and took some little screenshots and some clips of me wrestling. And I posted it on Facebook and tagged all my old wrestling buddies and coaches. And anyway, the last 12 hours have been a lot nostalgia for me, just seeing my coaches comment, my friends and my teammates. And ah, just thinking about it. But I started thinking this morning again, as I was looking at that, this is the identity shift, right? There's a lot of people who do wrestling. There's a lot of people who, again, they go through the motions, they do the thing. But there's a difference. When I was competing, I was a wrestler. And what does that mean? Like what does it look like? Because from the outside, it probably looks similar. But the difference was, when I would wake up in the morning, all I was thinking about was how to become a better wrestler. I was at school, in classes, that's all I was thinking about. When wrestling practice started, I was there. I showed up early. As soon as I got in the room, we started wrestling, started rolling around. As soon as practice ended, my dad would show up and I would do a second practice every single day. And then on the weekends, like when we traveled, we brought wrestling mats. We literally have wrestling mats that we'd hook to the top of my dad's truck. When we'd drive on family vacations, we'd get the wrestling mats out and we'd wrestle in the morning before we would go do our, go on the lake or whatever. I wasn't someone who was wrestling, I was a wrestler. It was different, right? It's an identity shift. Like it was my life. There was nothing else. It is who I was. And I look at the kids who are the most successful, if not the ones who wrestle, that it's the ones who are wrestlers, where it is who they are. It's who they become. And I keep trying to think, how do I instill that in kids? In wrestling, how do I get you to go from being like, oh yeah, I'm wrestling. I go to wrestling practice. Like, no, no, no. You don't understand. If you really want to be the best, if you want to be a State Champ, or a National Champ, or an All American, or whatever, the thing is, you have to... It's more than this. It's not just doing the motions that everybody's doing. It's like, you have to have this identity shift where you become a wrestler, where that's all you do. That's your full-time am job, income, livelihood, thought process. Like everything is wrapped into that thing. So why do I share this with you guys? I share it with you guys because as I've been now, 20 something years, teaching entrepreneurship, and online marketing, and doing this thing, I see that same division. There are people who start businesses. There are who try to make money. There's people who, whatever, right? But the people are successful, the ones who actually had the identity shift, where they have become an entrepreneur, they become a publisher, they become an author. They become something different. And you can tell that shift because it goes from like, "Okay, I got to work on my business today for an hour." Or, "I got to block out three hours," to "This is my obsession." I was talking about it with... Recently, I let go some people who had been in our company a long time. And I remember for me, it was like... It's tough because I'm like, man, if I got fired from this, from what I do, it's my life. There's not like I go to work and then go home at night. It's like, this is my life. And this is my life and I'm thinking about it all the time, like when I'm the shower I'm thinking about it. At my home, my family... Maybe that's wrong. I don't know, it's an obsession, but if you look at my identity, what am I like? I am an entrepreneur. I am a curator. I am a... Like, I could give you different identities that I resonate with. But it's deep. It's not a dabble. In fact, I remember, this is a couple years ago, somebody asked for my email address. I gave it to them. They're like, "That's your work email. What's your real email?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" And they're like, "Well, don't you have a personal email and a work email?" I'm like, "There's no division." I don't have a personal life and work life. This is my life. You know what I mean? And I was confused, because I remember someone on my team, assuming now I think I've learned since then that almost everyone has a work email and a personal email. But for me, again, there's not a line between those two things. This is my mission. When I was wrestling, I was a wrestler. My mission was singular focused. There was one thing. Since I've gotten out of wrestling and I've become who I am now at today, there's no work Russell and home Russel. There's Russell, and this is who I am. This is my personality. This is my identity. That's how deep your identity shift has to become. And not that you can't have success without it. People have success, they make money, blah, blah, like those things. But if you really want to, in my mind, to change the world, to do something amazing, it's deeper. It's this thing where it becomes you. That's what an identity shift is. It's not saying, "Oh yeah, I wrestle." No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a wrestler. Like you cut me, I bleed that color. I remember Stephen Larson one time, in fact, we made a whole t-shirt, a theme, out of funnel hacking live when you're calling people diehard funnel hackers. And his joke was, if you cut me open and you see my heart beating inside, you'll notice there's a blue gear and a red gear. That's how deep I am in this community. And so we made these t-shirts that said Diehard Funnel Hacker, and it had a beating heart, click funnel's heart. But again, that's the kind of identity shift you have to have. And I don't know exactly how to do that, or how to have it, other than it's got to become an obsession. I think in our society, in our world, people talk down about obsessions sometimes. Because there's definitely a negative stigma sometimes. And it's tough. As a producer who likes to produce, I struggle with people I love around me, including my wife and other family members, other people who are just like, "You got to turn it off. You got to stop." And I'm like, I don't understand what this means, turning it off. It's not like I'm going to work and I'm leaving work. It's who I am. It's my identity. There's no on off switch. It's just, it is.And that's the level of identity shift you've got to have you really want to change the world. I remember, I think I shared this on the last episode of the podcast. But I remember there was a wrestling film I used to watch all the time, with Tom and Terry Brands. And it started with, "My name's Tom Brands. My goal's simple, I want to be the greatest wrestler in the whole world." And then the second guy is, "My name's Terry Brands. My goal is simple. I want to be the greatest wrestler in the whole world." That was not somebody who was going to work and then going home at night. That was someone who, they were trying to change the world. They were trying to be the best. And I feel like, man, if you really want to do something great, you got to do that. And it's tough for most people. Because most people don't have that. It's interesting, I had my time when I got to be an athlete, which for me was from... I didn't start wrestling until eighth grade. So from eighth grade till college. So there's what, four years high school, 8, 9, 10. So I had a decade. Wow, I had a decade. I had a decade where my sole focus was being an athlete, and everything was there and focused. And I look at most people, it's interesting, because now that I'm coaching high school wrestling, most people, their only chance to be athletes is two or three years. If they start as a sophomore, maybe freshman, they make it four years. That's the window of the life they're an athlete. And if they're not great or whatever, like again, if they haven't had that identity shift, they do the thing, but they're not... Like they miss that. I think for me, I was lucky where I had a decade of my life where I was singular focused. I had a chance to have that. And so for me to go deep on something, to be obsessed with something, I had done it before. That pattern was in my brain. It was easy for me to, as I switched to business, to become like, okay, I'm going to tackle this with the same like fervent energy that I did with wrestling. And so I was able to go deep on it, where a lot of people have never had that chance in their life. They've never gone deep. They never sacrificed everything they had for something that they wanted to get. And if you haven't in life, it's going to be kind of hard. It's going to be hard to even understand. You've seen somebody who's crazy like me, and you've seen somebody. You get people around you, but you never experienced that. And it's like, how do you trick your mind? How do you train your mind? How do you go deep on it? And I don't know the exact answer, other than I think we got to stop thinking about it from a, go to work and back, and more of like, this is who I am, this is who I've become, this is who I serve. This is all the things related to that. So anyway, I'm sure some of you guys think I'm crazy, and you're rolling your eyes. And you're like, Russel, I didn't get in here to try to change the world, just trying to make some extra money. And I get that. But you will find out very quickly that the money is short lived. And the thing that, at least for me, and I don't think I'm unique in this. I've talked to a lot of successful people at the highest levels. I've talked to the Tony Robbins of the world, people like that. And it's the same thing, I don't do this for money. I have plenty of money. I do this because this is who I am. Like Tony Robbins is Tony Robbins. He's not like, I go to work and I motivate people. No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. Tony is... I don't know how to explain it other than he is Tony. This is his mission, his life. And he'll be on his deathbed, running a UPW, like streaming it in. Like, I don't want to stop. Like, I'm going to go til the heart stops beating. Just keep going and keep going. And I think that's me. It definitely is me. Unless I find something different to shift my identity to, but as right now, I love this. I love who I serve. I'm obsessed with it. The art is so rewarding and fulfilling to me, where, again, like Russell you got to turn it off. Like why would you want to turn it off? I can't understand that. It does not compute in my brain. And that's the level of obsession I think you really got to have, if you want to be successful in anything at the highest levels. So anyway, again, just thoughts in Russell's head that I want to share with you guys. Yeah, so I hope that helps. I hope you guys... And for those of you guys who are like me, and hopefully it gives you permission to be like, it's okay. It's okay that I'm obsessed. I got to be careful, because there's a line of obsession where you can lose everything. You can lose your family, you can lose your friends. And I don't believe in that. I believe in trying to incorporate the people you love most into your mission. Like my dad was at wrestling practice every day with me. My mom came to my tournaments. I was able to incorporate the people I loved in the mission that I was on at the time. And I feel like the same thing's true here. I had the chance to bring my kids to Funnel Acting Live. We created a whole family event, unlocked the secrets for our families, because I wanted to bring my kids to an event. So it's like, you don't have to do it and lose everything, unless you isolate from the people you love. It's like, how do you incorporate and bring those people on the trip and the ride with you? So anyway, I hope that helps somebody. I appreciate you guys for listening. It means the world to me. We're working on a new Funnel Hub inside of ClickFunnels 2.0, the very first one is marketingsecrets.com. So it's not quite live yet. By the time you guys hear this, it might be live. Hopefully in the next day or two, we'll have it up there. But it is the first ever Funnel Hub built on ClickFunnels 2.0, which is exciting. Actually, it's not true. We launched magneticmarketing.com on ClickFunnels, 2.0. So that was the first one. And it is live so you can go see it. You can test page speeds. The page speeds are insane on it, which is really cool. Even though we haven't actually turned on all the cashing and optimization stuff yet, it's still way faster than every other page builder. So it's exciting. Good things are happening. And do you want to know why? It's because we're obsessed. All right, thanks, guys, for listening. Appreciate you. And we'll talk soon. 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Most achievers I know struggle with truly feeling fulfillment. Some of my thoughts after a long weekend. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Hey, good morning everybody. This is Russell Brunson, and I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. I just dropped my kids off at school and I'm slowly exiting the parking lot with a million kids driving, hoping for my life. But I wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind for a little while, which is some of the downsides of being a hyper achiever. All right everyone, I'm still in the kids' parking lot, trying to get out, but I wanted to talk to you guys today about something that I was thinking about a lot this weekend, and it's interesting. I don't know if you'll learn anything from this, but I think for people who are like me, hopefully you'll feel less alone. And then people who aren't like me, this is me sitting on a couch and you get to be my therapist. So that's kind of the game plan. I hope that's all right. But what I want to talk about is some of the downsides of being an achiever, especially a hyper achiever. It's been interesting in my life and I wouldn't say all my life. When I was younger, I didn't have much direction or motivation or things I was trying to do. I used to come home from school and we'd watch cartoons and we'd eat Cheerios or Rice Krispies until dinner, and then we'd eat dinner and do homework, and that was kind of end of it. And I tried to play basketball. I tried to do some things, but I wasn't that good at anything. It wasn't until I started wrestling that I had my first identity shift, my first thing where I did something, I was like, oh my gosh, this is who I am. This is who I want to become and that was the day I became an achiever. I don't want to be good, I want to be the best. In fact, I remember there's an old wrestling movie we used to always watch and it had Tom and Terry brands on it, who, you know who they are they're twin brothers, the wrestled for Iowa, both world champs. One of them was an Olympic champ. And the video started with Tom Brands saying, "My name is Tom Brands and my goal is simple. I want to be the greatest wrestler in the whole world." And the next scene was Terry Brands. He said, "My name's Terry Brands and my goal is simple. I want to be the greatest wrestler in the whole world." And I remember I used to watch that and think in my head, my name's Russell Brunson and my goal is simple. I want to be the greatest wrestler in the whole world. And that was my goal and obviously I never met that goal. I never became the greatest wrestler at all time, but I set a high goal and I started working towards it and I killed myself to reach that goal. And I became an achiever so much so where I would do anything. I would cut 30 pounds a week. I was telling my high school kids I literally would come in on Monday at 160 pounds my sophomore year and then Thursday, I weighed at 130. And so yeah, I was losing 30 pounds a week every single week. I was doing just crazy things. I was working out. I was just wrestling, lifting weights, traveling around the country. Everything I could to reach that goal. And it's interesting. It's like there's something powerful about being a high achiever. You have this drive and you push and you get to accomplish and achieve things. But one of the downsides, probably the biggest downside is it's hard to be content and that's something I've struggled with my whole life. In fact, I see people who are very content and it's something that I am jealous of. Man, I wish I could just be content. I wish I could just sit there. I wish I could just relax. And the reason I started thinking about this, this weekend is because I start thinking about when in my life have I really felt content? And as hard as I can think, I only remember two times and the first time was in wrestling. And I apologize. I have kind of a cold right now. So if I'm sniffling, that's why. Or if my voice sounds funny. So the first time that I think I ever felt content was after my junior year and I had set the goal, I wanted to be a state champ. And I had worked towards it, worked towards it, worked towards it and I remember my junior year, I won the state title. And I remember winning it and then in the car driving home, I remember this is 17 year old Russell at the time and I'm driving home and I'm looking around, I'm looking at all the mountains and the scenery outside. And I was like, this is all? And I lived in Utah as a Utah state champ was looking around. I was like this is all of Utah and I'm a state champ. I'm the best in Utah right now. I'm the best in this entire state and I remember feeling so content that I was driving home and just like, ugh, I did it. I achieved that thing. And the rest of my wrestling career, I was always chasing after goals and dreams. I wanted to be an all American. I did get that. I became an all American, but I wanted to be a national champ and I took second. And then in college I wanted to win this tournament, that tournament. I did well, but I was never a national champ. I was never a PAC-10 champ. I never got to experience the big win again. I won tournaments and things like that, but winning my state title was the big thing and I felt so content afterwards. And so, but yeah, the rest of my wrestling career, I kept racing, chasing, chasing, chasing, and then eventually I lost and my career ended and that was the end of it. I never achieved that thing. And then for me, I was like, ah, as an achiever, I have to achieve something, and at the time I kind of started my business. And so I shift my focus to business and then I spent the next decade and a half running a business, running a business. And the weirdest thing I remember about business was there was never a time where you got your hand raised. It never ended, just like this continual cycle. IN wrestling, there would be tons of work and effort towards a goal and then you either win or you lose but it was finite. Where business is this revolving circle, which is good on some ends, because the game you can play for a long, long time. But it was also bad because I never got my hand raised. It never ended. I never felt like I achieved something. In fact, I remember one time, somebody to me, "When did you feel like you made it?" And I was like, "I don't know. I'll let you know if I ever do." I've never felt that way. There's always this constant pressure grind. And I've enjoyed it as an achiever. It's taken me to a lot of places. I've met a lot of cool people, done a lot of cool things, accomplished a lot of cool stuff but it was never a point where I was like, ah. Even when I go on mastermind trips or retreats or things like that, there's always this anxiety or stress. At Funnel Hacking Live, I always think at the end of it, I'm going to feel like ah, this complacency or that feeling, but I never felt it because as soon it was done, it's like, ah, we sold people in our coaching program. Now I've got to worry about that. And it's just always this cause of stress. Except for one time and the one time was after the 10 X event and some of you guys know this story. I set a goal before we went. I was like, I want to do 3 dollars million dollars in sales because that means I'll net a million. And that event was the perfect storm where we said the whole thing, the presentation just killed it and we ended up doing $3.2 million dollars in sales. And there was this moment after the pitch was done, and I stood in line for six hours taking pictures of everyone. And Collette and I went back to our room and we were so tired and I remember laying in bed and we took this picture of us just laying in bed, smiling together. And then we passed out for four hours. And that was the second time in my life I can remember being content where I was just like, ah, we did it. I set a big goal, achieved it and then it was done. And then I remember that night after we woke up, we went back into the room where everyone was processing the money and counting all the order forms and it just felt complete. It was final. I set the goal, I achieved it and I got a break. I had a chance to rest. And those are the two times in my life. Isn't that funny? Two times in life where I felt like I could rest where I was just like, oh, like I did it. And the rest of my life has been running and sprinting. And I don't know about you, but for me it's always like, when my book's done, then I'll have a chance to rest or when the event's done, or when the thing or whatever. But each of those as I finish one, it starts the next thing. We finish the book and then we start the book promotion. Then we finish the promotion and then we got to start the backend sales and the backend sales to the event and then the event to the next thing and it just keeps going and going. And I never felt that feeling of it being done, of just ah, it's finished. And yeah, like I said, only two times in my life I can remember feeling that feeling. So being an achiever, like I said, it's amazing because it gives you a chance to run and to achieve things and experience things and it makes your life very fulfilling. I feel like my life is very colorful. I feel good at painting this beautiful, amazing thing. And I love it. But the thing that I miss is the downtime, the quietness, that feeling of ah, you did it. I feel like that's probably what I've been chasing for so long. Some of you guys know I started my next book probably over a year ago now dang. And the subtitle to the book was going to be The Art of Achievement. Or excuse me, The Science of Achievement, the Art of Fulfillment because that's what I wanted the book to be about. And it was interesting because the parts where I was writing about achievement was really easy for me to write, the Science of Achievement. Here's how we do it. That part was really easy. And then every time we got to the Art of Fulfillment, that part was really, really difficult for me. I struggled writing those things so much so that I ended up stopping writing that book. And I was like, you know what? I don't know how to be fulfilled. I haven't felt that. I don't feel content. I don't feel fulfilled all the time. I'm still trying to figure this out. So I've actually changed the whole book where the book now, I change the title as well. The new book is going to be called Secrets of Success and it's going to be about achievement, about success. How do you get these things? Because that's what I've mastered, but I understand that I'm good at. But the fulfilling part, I don't know yet. I understand pieces of it. I understand the psychology, I understand things, but I haven't been able to really feel that often in my life. And so I'm saving that book or that part of the book for a later year in my life where I have a chance to figure those things out. So anyway, this weekend for me was interesting because I sat down and I had this chance to start thinking through how do I feel fulfilled? How do I feel content? What is that thing? And that's when the whole thought came. In my life when have I felt content? And the only times I could think about was I won the state title and when I did the 3.2 million in sales at the 10 X event. The two times I felt I like I could rest and I feel like I'm chasing something, looking for that next time to rest. And so I think for me and I'll report back on this because I'm going to try to set goals that have a celebration time. When you achieve this thing, you did this, this, and now you get to rest. Take a day off or do whatever. I don't take any days off and when I do, I'm usually stressing out because the next thing's in the way or things are happening, you know what I mean? So anyway, that's the pros of the cons of being an achiever. I'm sure some of you guys relate to that. Some of you guys think I'm crazy. Either way is totally cool. But for me that's what I'm looking for is how do I get more of those things in my life? And for any of you guys who have been on this hamster wheel like me and you're running and you're achieving and you're doing the things, I want to give yourself permission to try to do what I'm trying to do, which is okay, how do I get fulfillment? How do I get my hand raised? How do I succeed? And then rest in that moment so I can feel it and I can enjoy it and recharge off it before I go to the next accomplishment. Before I climb the next mountain, before I try to conquer the next demon. So anyway, that's what's on my mind this weekend. Hopefully this helps somebody. Like I said, just not really how to as much as most of my podcast episodes, but hopefully just... Yeah, again, therapy for me to talk it out. So thanks you guys. I appreciate you all for listening and hopefully you have a great day. Talk soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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