The Russell Brunson Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this final segment, you get to hear Russell answer some questions from the attendees of the ROR Symposium. If you have enjoyed these episodes about the importance of relationships, please check out RORUniversity.com to learn more! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey everybody. This is Russell. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. All right. What did you guys think? Did you like the keynote presentation so far? I hope you did. Hopefully it gave you some ideas about how we grow a business using relationships and joint ventures and the Dream 100, and give you guys some realistic expectations on how the game is played. Hope you guys enjoyed it so far. Now at the end of the symposium, they opened up to Q&A, which was really fun. And so I had a chance to do some Q&A, answer some questions, and we kind of jumped all over the board. So this episode will be fun. You'll get a couple different perspectives on some questions. My guess is that one of the questions you're going to hear is a question that you're probably wondering or something maybe you should have asked and didn't even think about it. So I hope this gives you a some value and you get some benefit from it. Once again, I want to thank Christopher Voss for allowed me to use my presentation from his ROR symposium for the podcast episode. If you want to follow Christopher and learn more about what he's doing and how to build better relationships in your business, get more traffic, build more referrals and things like that, make sure you go to roruniversity.com and get on his list. All right, that said, I'm going to open up the third and final episode from our ROR symposium. We had a chance to do some Q&A with me, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks so much. Don: One of my capacities today, just in this hour, is to be bouncer. So y'all get on the velvet rope, I've got my clipboard. I will let you go first, McCall, because I can see you on my screen. McCall, we've got 10 or 15 minutes, so just do me a favor, people: ask Russell your question with a certain amount of concise nature, and then he can answer it, because we have one last thing we need to do before Russell goes, and then we can wrap up the symposium. So McCall, go ahead. Unmute yourself and ask your question. McCall: Hi! Okay. I want to know who's on your list next. Don: Ooh. McCall: You got to have a list of people who you are always trying to connect with. I know you've gone to Tony Robbins. I mean, I know there are, but who are the people who you are actively trying to connect with now? Are you going to share it with us? Is it a secret? Is it supposed to be a secret? Am I missing something here? Russell: That's a good question. Maybe I'll put out the word, and guys can go find these people for me. McCall: Yes! Russell: It's interesting, and partially it's kind of where my life, like number one... Okay. So partially it's because I started getting obsessed with UFC during COVID, so I enjoyed watching more UFC fights... So this will make sense in a second. Also, I'm working on my success and personal development books right now, so it kind of opens up the reason why also. But the two people that I really am looking forward to eventually is Dana White and Joe Rogan. Those two guys are super fascinating to me. I don't agree with- McCall: Joe Rogan and, who was the first one? Russell: Dana White, who's the owner of UFC. Both of them, I don't agree with our belief system, like half, but they fascinate me on the other half and I have the ability to... Hopefully, all of us can learn is you can disagree with somebody on a lot of things and still have respect from them and still learn from them, so. But those are the two I'm really fascinated by and I have so many things... I'm not a very good interviewer, but man, if I sit down for an hour or two them, I would have so many things I want to ask them and like, ah, those guys fascinate me, so. McCall: Do you just do it in a Kevin Bacon way? Where you're like, okay, the six degrees of Kevin Bacon away from Joe Rogan and Dana White, and you just like start to eliminate? Russell: Definitely. There's that, but there's also like, is there a way I can incorporate Joe? How can I serve Joe Rogan? Right? He's the biggest podcast, my podcast doesn't help him, but I'll put him on stage potentially. Or there's something we could do, or... What's the next thing? If he's going to be doing his comedy shows, maybe I could find out like, "Hey, I can help fill a show in a city. We can do a funnel." Something like that where I can use my unique abilities to help magnify something they're doing. Or Dana White, I don't know how I'd serve him yet, but that would be kind of the thing. And then yes, it's looking at degrees of separation. I do know that Grand Cardone had Dana White on stage, I know there's that; I know Alex Sharpton is moving next door to Joe Rogan. So there's all kind of things. But I'm not like, "Hey Sharpton, can you call Joe Rogan for me? What's his address?" I'm not doing that, because I don't want to be the creepy guy. But I'm like, okay, I do know there's connection points, and who and how and all this kind of things. And then I'm also trying to pay attention to him. So like when I do have a chance to meet them the very first time, I can have an intelligent conversation. I can tell when people are prepared to meet me, because they... Like today, I had a guy that I'm potentially interviewing for a big position. And it was in the conversation, I could just... like, little things. He asked something about wrestling. I was like, "Oh, how do you like wrestling?" And he's like, "Your kid's wrestle?" I was like, I literally Instagramed a picture of Aiden on a wrestling mat last night. He did his homework, so we had this thing, and that's when I was like, "Oh, he is cool because he's paying attention." And all of a sudden I was like, "Ah, he got me. I trust this guy now because he had that commonality." And so, I'm trying to pay enough attention to them, what they're doing, where I could have a... Not that I have to agree with him, but I can like have a conversation. Like, "Hey, I don't agree with this. What do you think?" Sometimes agreeing with people don't create the connection points. The disagreement, you can have a discussion. That gets more fascinating and you get closer to someone through that than you ever could like, "Oh, you're so cool." People don't want to feel like they're being worshiped, they want to feel like an equal. So it's like, you get a mentally stimulating conversation with somebody that you disagree with, sometimes that's the best connection. I don't have the same opinion of that person, but that was the fascinating view to look at it through. And so, just gotta do my homework there. And yeah, stuff like that. McCall: That's cool. Thanks man! Russell: No worries. Don: Awesome. Okay, next... That's how rumors get started. Did you guys know that Russell's getting into UFC? He's going to be the ultimate fighter champion. Russell: I’m ready for it, let's go. Don: Let's go! All right, Daniel, you're next. Go ahead. Russell: I think if I was to have just retired from wrestling right now in my life, I 100% would be going towards UFC. Now that I'm an old man, I can't. And I didn't understand fighting back when I did get done competing, but if I was graduating from competition right now, I had 100% be in the UFC, or trying to be in the UFC, for sure. Don: And I had no idea that you were such a pop culture reference person. I've seen you do it stage a few time, but you did it in this small group, and I'm like, "Thank God. Russell and I have this in common." Because my immediate thought when you talked about it was, you can be like the guy from friends when John Favreau tries to be the ultimate fighting champion. He's passed his prime there and he has to give up the dream. But anyway. Daniel, go ahead with your question. Daniel: All right. First up, thank you so much, Russell. It's such an honor to be here in the same room as you. It's because of you, my mindset has switched from the mindset of just wanting to earn more money to serving people. I'm a big fan of you and your podcast, and especially Marketing In Your Car. That totally rocks. And my question… Russell: By the way, did you notice that? Now I know, first off, he's paid attention, but it wasn't just like, "Oh, I bought your book." He's like, Marketing In Your Car, which is my old podcast, he paid attention to. Yeah, so checked out connection point, now I'm like this guy's a real fan. I actually trust him even more. So, very good for you. That was awesome. Daniel: I love for you, Russell. I love you so much. So your latest podcast where you mentioned about the reasons for entry versus the reasons to stay, from Dan Kennedy. So I believe that we can also use that same framework for our Dream 100 too. If yes, could you expound a little bit more on that for me, please? Russell: Yeah. For sure. Those who don't know the reference yet, I did a podcast about this fax right here. Hold on. Oh, it’s not this one, dang it. Anyway, Dan only sends things through fax. So, there's fax that we got, which was like the fax he sent to the guy who bought it before me about how the other company destroyed his brand and his name, and there's a whole bunch of these little nuggets. So I shared one nugget, which was the difference between why people come into your business and why they stay in your business. They're different, right? For example, in our Mastermind, people come, it's like, "I want to be in my Russell's Mastermind!" And they get there and they're like, "Russell's not that cool, but all the people here are amazing!" And they stick because of the community of people, right? So it's like, I'm the hook to get him in, but this is what you're actually paying for is this amazing community. Right? And Dan was talking about, because for them, it's like, people come in because they want the money making secret of whatever, but they stay for the community and the newsletter, and Dan and his thoughts. It's understanding that they come and they stick for different reasons. And so Dream 100's very similar. I think a good practical example is like when we launched ClickFunnels, I was trying to find people that we could build funnels for free. Right? So I called a bunch of like bigger name people. Tony was one, Dave Asprey, a bunch of people who I woke up to. And I was like, "Hey, can I build you a funnel for your new book launch or for your thing?" It's like, they came because I wanted to serve them, do a thing like that. But then, that's how I got to know him. Right? I had a chance to go to Bulletproof Cafe and film Dave Asprey and get to know him, and become personal with him and like build a relationship. And so the hook was what got him to say yes to the meeting and to me spending half a day with him. Right? But then after that, the relationship stuck because of the other things. Does that make sense? So it's kind of the same thing. How do I surge enough hook to get them in so you have time to build relationships. That's the hardest thing. Right now it's hard because my time's so busy. How am I going to have time to… I can’t please everybody? So it's like, what's the hook? Like, what's something I can bring this value to you. It's like, "Okay, I got 30 minutes. Let's figure this out." And then during that window, if you build a relationship now, they stick for that. And I think that's a lot of times the way you open the door is through how can I serve you? For me, it's like, I don't have many talents, but funnels is one of them. So I built funnels for a lot of people. And nowadays, those other people aren't get ahold. Well, I don't necessarily build a funnel, but I'm like, "Hey, we want to migrate you over. I got a few amazing people to help you do your thing and build it out." And that way, again, we're serving them, getting it like, "Hey, now your things on ClickFunnel's platform." And then now, relationship is built. So I think that's probably how I look at it from an affiliate standpoint. Daniel: So yeah, just like going all out to serve them and just having that house service, and from there on, you build a reciprocity, and that's how you continue on the relationship. Thank you so much, Russell. Really appreciate you. Russell: No worries. Here’s an example, when Dave was out with somebody, we were at this thing and we'd asked this guy... We knew who it was. He's a friend but not best buddies. And we had ClickFunnels. It was when ClickFunnels first came out. We asked him three or four times, like, "Hey, you want to help us..." And he was just like, "No, no." And then Dave found out that he lives in Australia, he was flying back to Australia, and he wanted this surfboard. So Dave went and bought the surfboard, and then tried to give it to him that will miss the thing. So David had to jump in a car and drive three hours to the airport to get it to him and all this stuff. And then he flew back to Australia, he called me, he's like, "Man, Dave literally bought the thing I was looking for, drove it to me, got it for me in time. Now I have it here." He's like, "I have to roll ClickFunnels now." So Dave was the hook, and I was like, "Oh, you guys serve a level that nobody else does." Like, yes. Okay. Now I'll do the thing. And back, one of our early promoters, way back in the day. So anyway, just, it's always looking for that, like how do you help the people out first? Daniel: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, Russell. Appreciate it. Russell: No worries. Thank you. Daniel: God bless. Don: Great question, Daniel. Thanks for being a real life example of what we're supposed to be doing, man. Russell was able to point out three things you did right, right there. That was amazing. All right, Jim, you're next buddy. Mr. Show, go ahead and unmute yourself and ask Russell your question. And try not to get in trouble. Jim: Don't get trouble. That's harsh. Russell: I'm like, "Cut the mic, cut the mic." Jim: Yeah. Russell: "Get him off, get him off." Don: I'm just kidding. Jim and I have had a really great relationship. He's been helping out, and he's going to help me out with something a little bit. Russell: Very good. Jim: Yes. So I focus on live streaming because I'm addicted to it. I think that Twitch is the future and I'm just trying to bring it here a little faster. And to entrepreneurs in particular, and I love the relationships that come from it. I had a game show called Exes Knows game show that formed amazing relationships. But it was very tight-knit, small family kind of a thing. So like, I want to give that to the audience too, and I wanted to know with like you have the Marketing Secrets show, and when you did that YouTube video, like I got giddy. You were like, "You need a show." I was like, "Yeah." But I just want to know if you had any recommendations for how to make it, that personal feel of being on the show, how can I give that to the audience? Russell: Mm. So I know what Twitch is because my kids watch video games on it and stuff. So can you explain so I understand like, are you in Twitch shows like more like, business type stuff? Or how are you… Jim: Yeah. If you go under Just Chatting for Twitch, they have actual shows. And shows like talk shows, interviews, game shows like what I ended up doing. They have round tables and all sorts of things that are not game centric, and the audiences are just loving it. They're adoring it. And they have things like Patreon to where you can take that step closer. They had exclusive content and things. So I was thinking of doing something more like that, but I'm not a big fan of Patreon. I just want to give that to them anyway. Russell: Yeah. It's funny. Again, this is mostly because I don't understand how the whole platform works. We talked about like, "We should do a Twitch show where people are just building funnels all day long, and my kids watch video games, and like..." We talked about it a couple times, so it's interesting. Again, I haven't done it on the platform, so I don't know exactly how it worked, but I think conceptually, the way you build communities is a couple things, right? Number one is like, people have to feel like they're a part of something. So it's not just like a bunch of randos coming to an event. It's like for Funnel Hacking Live, it’s a bunch of funnel hackers come to an event. Like, they're coming, and it's not like they're showing up just randomly. It's like, this is my people. I'm part of this. It's a tribe, it's a community. They're part of it, right? Just like family reunion, you go back and it's like, all my family comes together because we're family. And you can talk forever because it's a family mixed with family. And so we always try to create that, but it comes with people identifying with the thing you're doing, right? Expert Seekers talks a lot about this, but it's like those kind things. How do you get people to self-identify so they feel like they're part of the thing as opposed, I'm going to watch a show. Like I'm part of this, right? When we do ClickFunnel specifically, I was like, if people think it's Russell's company, they're not going to... It might be successful, but it'll stop. I was like, I want people to feel like ClickFunnels is our software. This is our company together. Right? And so you look at my languaging that I talk through things. I'm never like, "My company ClickFunnels." I'm like, "Yeah, it's a community." I'm like, "This is ClickFunnels, we have this community." And I'm trying to make it our company, not my company. Because no one cares if my company succeeds or not, but they care if our company, if our movement, if our culture, if our thing is different. Right? And so it's like, how do we make it we instead of just you? And I think that's one reason we've had so much success inside of our industries, I look at everybody else and everybody else doesn't do that. Everyone else is like, them and about them and about the thing. And it's like, we try to be us and try to make people feel tighter. And then you don't have to necessarily monetize on Patreon or whatever. It could be just swag. Like for example, we had Derral Eves came and spoke at our last Inner Circle meeting and he... Jim: I love Derral Eves. Russell: I don't know if you guys know the Chosen, but they've done $29 million in t-shirt sales on the back of the Chosen. So the content's completely free. Everything's free out there. But because the community and people want it, just in t-shirt sales. Right? And they've done a lot more in other stuff. But if you think about that, it's like, all the content's completely free, but it's the community. And so it's looking at that like how it's going to monetize it. Maybe it's not a paid thing or Patreon or whatever, but what do you have? Is it swag? For me, it's software. My whole goal is to get people into software eventually. Dan Kennedy was all about newsletters, physical newsletters is their thing that they monetize. And so it's just looking at like what monetization vehicle is exciting for you, and then making that the thing that, that you plug people into. It could be anything. It could be, again, software supplements. It could be all of us drink the same drink, supplement drink. Whatever the thing is. But there's this commonality thing that ties everybody together where they have this unique experience. In fact, prove it's a network marketing company I've done a lot of work with in the past. But everyone's drinking Ketones. Literally, the drink that they're drinking is what ties this community together, and they all have Ketone shirts and all these things, but that's the glue that ties all the people together, where they're all doing the same things. For me, it's software; other people, it's supplements; some people, it's new... whatever the thing is that glues the tribe together. Jim: Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. Russell: Sunday, if I remember on Twitch, doing the funnel hacker, funnel building show. I'll have to consult with you. Jim: Check out Just Chatting, man. It's really, really fun. Russell: Yeah. Very cool. Don: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jim. That's a great question. Russell, we have three more hands raised, and I've kind of cut it off and said that we're not going to have any more time. So if we could just take the last few questions, and then we'll wrap things up. Tammy, you're next. Could you please unmute and ask your question? Tammy: Hey Russell. I am so excited to have the opportunity. Thank you very much. And you mentioned something that was kind of a segue as to what I wanted to ask you, had I ever got the opportunity to ask you. And here it is! Tell me a little bit about the Funnel Hacker t-shirt. And the reason I asked is because this is what I do. I help clients make connections with their clients and customers, and love on them and kind of work their way through building these amazing relationships. And I use the Funnel Hacker t-shirt as an example all of the time. It's crazy. I don't even know if you know. Do you know you can't even go on eBay and buy a Funnel Hackers t-shirt. Like, occasionally you could find one, but most generally- Russell: A nasty one somebody had… Tammy: ... you just can't, man. I mean, you just can't find it. And so, it is a coveted item that defines your community. It gives them a jumping off point, not because it has your logo on it. I don't even think that's the brilliant part of this. The reason is because you have, either intentionally or not intentionally, you have connected with the end product of what you're delivering, and people self-identify with that to the point of, they want to be what it is that you offer. And I think people miss that so much in the branding. I see that in my business and things that I do; people want to slap their logo on it. Their first thing's like, let's put a logo on it and it's not about you. Can you speak to that just a little bit? Because got to love it. Russell: 100%. So I remember going to T&C before we launched Funnel Hacking Live. And I remember they gave swag items, and it was weird things. Like, one was a tuxedo and the things... And everybody got home and had them, and I just kind of threw them away and I didn't do anything with it. I remember we were building swag, I definitely didn't do this intentionally, but then after it happened, I realized it, and then we doubled down on that. And so what we realized is that, 100% of what you said. So yes, everything you said has my mark of approval. They have to identify. If they can't say I am a blank, they're not going to connect with it. Right? So I am a funnel hacker. I am a biohacker. I am a lady boss. I am a funnel builder. You can say, "I am a..." And then the word. That's how it is. Because I put it on like, I'm a funnel hacker. This is funnel hacker. But they have to be able to say that, "I am a..." Whatever. Expert Seekers would be a horrible t-shirt. I'm an Expert Seekers. No, I am a ClickFunnels. No, this is not going to work. It's not going to create a movement. Right here, Dan. Right? "I am diehard. I'm a diehard funnel hacker." That's the amplification of it. Right? But you wear that because that's who you are. I am a... Boom. And so that's what self identifies. And wearing a tuxedo thing was weird. I can't remember the one they had. I remember specifically, because Funnel Hacking Live was like a year later or something. And I remember thinking like I want swag that people would wear. And what's crazy now is I get texts probably two or three times a week from friends who are like, "I'm in Malaysia on those little carts." And as I'm driving down the street, there's this dude. They are taking pictures. "This dude in the middle of nowhere is wearing your shirt." And like, I get texts. It's like the craziest thing. Someone the day was like, "I'm in an airport in Singapore," "I'm in Australia," "I'm in New Zea-". All these things, and they're sending these random shirts, yeah I see a bunch of you guys wearing them. And it's just the coolest thing. And it's been spread through. If you notice nowadays, not all of them, sometimes they have different reasons, but almost all of our core shirts that we give away or do things with, always the test for me is like, "Can I say I am a blank?" If we can, sweet. If not... maybe it's something that's like a cool whatever, but it's not like a movement making something that someone wears. And so yes, 100% agree. And that's why we do it. And again, I don't think I did it up front. In fact, I think it was actually Kaelin Poulin. Because we had Funnel Hacker, and she had launched her swag stuff and a bunch of them didn't work. And then the one that just said LadyBoss on it, she came back, and I remember in our Inner Circle meeting, that's what she said. She's like I realize if they can't say I am a whatever, they don't self-identify, she's like, "We may sell it, but for us to sell a lot, it's like the self-identification gives people to actually buy, wear it, all that kind of stuff." So, very cool. Tammy: Thank you. Daniel: Awesome. Great question. Okay, Larry. And then we've got the last two. So Larry, go ahead and unmute and ask your question. Larry: Thank you. Thank you, Russell. For this wonderful speech. I'm really excited, because I started my journey three years ago with your Secrets books, and I have read them dozens of times, and audiobooks also. So I very well know your concepts of Dream 100 and making movements. I just want to, to ask you, I'm starting to make movement. It's a really, really small, really small group of fearless live go-getters. We are fighting the fear of going lives and starting those lives in the business. So what's your recommendation for me? I have finally a month and a half ago started to get some traction. I joined One Comma Club. So how to make that movement. Russell: So your people are going live like on Facebook. Is that what we're talking about? Larry: Yes. Yes. Since inside of the group, we are practicing, and later they are starting using that in their business. Russell: Okay. And then what type of people are you trading? Larry: Entrepreneurs and marketers. Russell: Do they fall in a certain subcategory underneath that? Larry: Yeah. Well, yes, they are people who actually haven't done those lives at all, but can realize very fast the power of it and have to overcome that fear. I'm also introverted, just like you, and I have done 160 lives in a row just to persuade myself. And during that period, I have persuaded so many people, so eventually the moment catch up. Russell: Oh, that's awesome. Well, I'd be looking at it like, if I was you, it'd be like, what do these people identify as, right? You know, McCall did Charisma Hackers. I did Funnel Hackers. What do you people consider themselves? Are they creators? The whole creator economy is a big thing. I'm a creator, I'm a go live creator. Are they doing physical projects? Are they experts? I look at how they would identify themselves. In fact, I don't even ask them. Hey, there's a lot of different people in this group. How would you self-identify yourself? And do a little quiz or survey, and see what the words that they're using. Because I didn't come up with funnel hacker, by the way. It's interesting. I had a webinar called the Funnel Hacks webinar, and we sold a course called Funnel Hacking Secrets or something like that, or Funnel Hacks. Anyway, whatever it was. And it was someone in our forum who posted, "Good morning, funnel hackers! Blah, blah, blah, blah." And I was like, "Oh, that's so cool! They called themselves funnel hackers." And they're like, "Oh!" And then like, "We need to..." And that started the whole thing. It wasn't something I came up with. It was like, they said it, someone said it. I wish I knew who said it, because I'd like give them an award or something. But someone said it in our little Facebook group of maybe 2000 or 3000 people at the time. And I was just like, "That's the coolest..." I remember like literally calling Dylan and Todd. And I was like, "It is the coolest thing. Someone just calls themselves a funnel hacker." Like, ah! So I would maybe ask your people and like, how would you identify yourself? Like, what are you? What would you call yourself? You can tell them, "We're building a tribe here. What should we call ourselves? We need a cool name." And see what the people in the group, kind of what they come up with as well. Larry: We are fearless live goal getters, but they like that name, but maybe I should reiterate it. Russell: Yeah. So there are fierce side go-getters so like with people who build funnels, so are we go-getters? Are we livers? Are we... Something. Something. Larry: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Russell: So very cool. Congrats, man. That's awesome. The Two Comma Club's the hardest. By the way, for who does is that after you get past the Two Comma Club, at least for me, there's a mental block for three years to break. Then after I got it, the rest of business got really. That's like the hardest one, is that first two Comma Clubs. One Comma Club is huge. Anyway, you get it. That's awesome. Larry: Thank you. Thank you. You're fantastic. Don: Love it. Awesome. Okay. So we have Michael Vale. Michael, you're not on camera, but I'm sure you're there. Yep. Michael: Yeah, I'm here. I'm actually hiding at work, so I can't put the camera on. Don: Understand. Michael: Yeah. That's a little different question for you, Russell. I love the way that you include your family, and I got to meet your two kids and your wife at Funnel Hacking Live. You'll have. And I know you're trying to get your boy cut up to be a little bit, but how does this play into the relationship world? Kind of an odd question, but... Russell: Say it again. So how does having my- Michael: Well, I'm just one of your hacker hire, but to see that and to see you share your faith, bring, for me, validity. It makes you aesthetic as a person. And how does that build relationships out in the community? , Russell: So, I think Myron Golden said, he said, "You don't attract who you want, you attract who you are." And so initially, I would try to get whoever into my world and I would kind of hide who I was more so, and I got people who I actually didn't like very much. If you've read the intro to Dotcom Secrets, I talk about how one day I woke up and I hated all my customers because I wasn't being like... And I hate the cliche. Like, "You need to be more authentic!" I was like, all right, well, I'm going to start sharing everything in my life. And I remember I started talking about my wrestling, I started talking about my kids back then. We just had our twins. I told that story, and I started with my wife. And it was crazy because I talked about these things, people who liked me started coming into my world. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I actually like these people that I'm serving now," because we attract who we like. And there's people who… you know, it was years before I was willing to talk about God and my beliefs there, because I was like scared, like, "Ah!" And I started doing it and it was crazy, because one of two things happening. They didn't believe in God and they're like, "I don't care. Russell's cool for this." Or that you like, "Oh, I'm offended because you talked about that," and left. And I was like, "Sweet. That's great that they're gone." You know what I mean? And it's just interesting because the more I've done it, the more the people who we attract, I like them more and it's are exciting. And so I think it's just... I don't know. And I get a question a lot like, well, "Are you scared showing your kids on Instagram? Are you scared?" And yes, it's scary. At the same time, this is the world we live in today. You know what I mean? There comes a point where you've got to trade your kids, you got to do stuff, you got to pray that things are going to be safe and then hope for the best. And you know what I mean? And so, I don't know. It's being willing to share those things that are scary. And I'm not vulnerable at the point where I'm sharing everything about my life, but I definitely introduce people so they know who I am and where I stand and my values. Because at the end of day, I want more of those people around me. And there's people who come into our world who don't have my values, but a lot of times we transition, right? They come in because I make money, make money. And then they keep coming, then we talk about this and eventually like, "Huh." You start thinking about things differently. And so it's just being willing and open to share those kind of things. And if you do it, then it'll attract the right people. So yeah, I think for everybody just be being okay with that. Don's a great example of this, right? Don, I've seen a transformation in him over the last year and I love him. I love him however he wants to be. I don't care. And I respect him. He's a great friend, so it doesn't matter to me. And it's the same thing. Right? And some people, I'm sure you've lost friends, I'm sure you've gained friends. And it's like, who cares? Are long as the people I want are going to be around me and that's amazing. And the people who are not okay with that, they're gone and that's amazing too. It makes life so much better. I think it's like, all us should be who we want to be, and I think it's awesome. Michael: Thank you, Russell. Thank you. Russell: Hey, can we actually... I see Luke over here. Can we do one more question? Because I'm curious… Don: Don't worry. Don't worry. He's here. I just very quickly, I just want to say thank you, Russell, for that, by the way. It's my turn to cry. I made it through three days without crying, which is not easy for me. Losing people in my life like you was my biggest fear. Not because of who you are, because of the stories I told myself. So thank you for letting me love unapologetically and love myself unconditionally. I appreciate it. Russell: No worries, man. Don: Hey, Luke. So what you don't know about Luke yet, maybe, Russell, is Luke is 12, just turned 13, spoke on this symposium as one of the 35 amazing speakers, and did it on his birthday. And he courageously has raised his hand to ask the Russell Brunson a question. Luke, let's go, buddy. Luke: Hey Russell, I'm a super big fan. I have Dotcom Secrets. It's completely stained and everything because I've carried it everywhere around with me. And my brother he created- Russell: My kids don't think I'm cool, so if you could let him know, that'd be awesome. Luke: My brother, he's a huge fan. He created his own landing page, promoting your book at the age of seven. And so he loves you too. My question for you is how do you get credibility at a young age in an adult world? Russell: Ooh, that's that's a great question. So, I would say first off you're doing it. Like the bigger thing is in people's minds, and I'm the same way. We ought to set our our minds, like, "I can't be successful because of blah." Right. "Because I'm too young, I'm too old, I've got..." Everyone's got an excuse of why they can't do it, but what's crazy is like, when I got started, as I started doing stuff, people were like, "Oh my gosh, you're so young. This is cool." Right? And then you seem a little bit older. I think more of it's a mental thing. The fact you are here, there's a whole bunch of speakers on here, and I kept seeing your face. And I was like, "I want to talk to that guy. I want to talk to that guy the most. Like everyone else, oh, they're all boring adults. They're like, blah. Who cares?" I want to talk to you, that's why I called you at the end. So I think it's actually like a superpower. Like, usually the things that we are afraid of or we think are going to be are limiting things, end up becoming our superpowers. Right? And I think it's just leaning into it and being okay with it. Because most of that is just in our head, thinking like, I can't do it because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't do it. Everyone's got excuse. I'm still to this day have tons of excuses. Like, I can't do it because I talk too fast or I'm not as cool as somebody else, or blah, blah, blah. We all have these same things. I think it's just understanding that that's actually a superpower. The fact that you're young and you're having success and you're doing these things is going to attract more people to you. More people are going to want to have you speaking at their events. And no lens. I don't know if you know Noah yet, but he was, I think, I think he was 11 or 12 when he somehow figured out my Voxer ID, hacked into my Voxer ID, and started messaging me. Anyway, I was just like, there's this young kid messaging me and... and I don't know. I wasn't scared. So if I started, do I respond back or not? Because it's a weird conversation and then I just showed you the message. It was so funny because he's like, "Hey Russell, I found an error on your funnel. Here's the fix, send it to your tech guy," and sent it to me. I was like, "What?" An 11 year old kid like found an error on my thing and then sent it to me. Right? And then the next day he's like, "Hey Russell, you talked about this thing. So I built an entire funnel that you could use to give your audience just as a gift. Here's the share funnel link if you want to use it. If not, that's totally cool as well." And then something else, he's like, "Hey, I took your sales page. I think I got a better hook so I rebuilt it. Feel free to A-B split test." And he kept sending me these things and eventually like, "Who are you?" And we started talking, and he's a young kid, same kind of thing. And then his story was so cool. I introduced a bunch of people and he introduced himself, and he spoke at one of our events and just all these doors got open because he was young. Right? If would've been a 35 year old dude, I just would have blocked everything because he was young, I was curious and it opened up all these things. And so I would just lean into it and realize that what you have as youth is a superpower. It's not a negative thing at all, and people are going to see you and just be blown away by what you're doing, and just keep doing it. And anyway, so hope that helps. Luke: Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Russell. Russell: No worries. Thank you. Don: So Luke, I don't know if you know, but Russell has this really awesome event. I know personally that he said a number of times that behind Funnel Hacking Live. It's his favorite, if not a dead heat for his favorite, it's called unlock the secrets. And it's a family driven event and we were able to go to the one that happened in I think Denver in 2019, but is there a rumor that you're going to do another one, Russell? Russell: We do have one coming up. So Luke, if you want a message my team we'll invite you and your family. You guys can come to it. It's awesome. It's going to be in Arizona. Where are you from? Luke: I'm in Canada. Russell: In Canada. Okay. Well, if you can break out of Canada, it's in Arizona, I think in June of this year. So message Chris or someone. He can connect you with that with my assistant, and we'll give you your family tickets if you guys want to come to it. Yeah. It's a family event. Luke: I would love that. Russell: Last time we did it, I think we had 300 or 400 like teenagers there and it was like the coolest experience ever. This year's going to be even cooler, so. Don: Russell, do you have time for me to tell one quick anecdote before we do something for Chris? Russell: Yeah. Don: The anecdote is about Unlock the Secrets, and number one, I'm a huge for family person, so I love the fact that during that event, you light up in a different way. And taking pictures of you, you make different faces, you act a little differently just because you're nurturing what you love about life in children, and it's so fun to watch. Two things. I watched a person, a young man, sitting at the corner of one of the edge of the roads, and he was furiously typing and doing stuff. And I kind of looked at his mom and she goes, yeah, and she kind of did this thing. And I was like, what? And she goes, "He's building another funnel." And I'm like, "Oh, another funnel?" And I was like... And I have a picture. He turned it around and he had his ClickFunnels page open and he scrolled it for me. He had dozens and dozens and dozens of that. This like 11 year old had designed himself. And then Noah, my interaction with him was when I was photographing him on stage, you allowed people to ask some questions at the panel. And they said, "Hey, I'm just curious. What do you charge to build a funnel?" You remember this? Russell: This is the best ever! Don: You want to tell everybody? Russell: Yeah. He's like, "Actually, I don't charge people for funnels anymore. I only trade for equity." Don: Uh-huh (affirmative). He's like, "I don't charge hourly. I only do it for equity." And I was literally like, "This kid is my idol now." He's not even in high school, and he doesn't do it for hourly wage. He only does it for equity. So, Luke, if I have the honor and pleasure of seeing you at Unlock the Secrets, I can't wait to see your funnel, and you can tell me that you want equity in my company to help me with something. Luke: I'm super excited. Don: Appreciate you, Luke. Russell: I love my… My kids actually told me this morning, I was driving to school. And Ellie's like, "Dad, you're the least mature adult that we know." Or something like that. And I'm like, "Thank you. That's amazing." Don: It's the Peter Pan quote, right? We have to get older, but we never have to grow up. That's all there is to it. Russell: Yes, exactly. Don: Hey Christopher, as we wrap up, I'm sure you're going to have words for Russell. I'm going to have a few myself, but I need to find you in my list. There you are. Russell: He passed out, he’s tired. Let's give him a break. Don: He is. He's probably sleeping. Hey buddy, how you doing? Christopher: Doing good. Don: Blown away. Blown away. Christopher, do me a favor. I'm sure Russell has very busy and important things to do. He's graced us with 90 minutes of his time. Now that we were able to surprise you with this, thank Russell for his time and thank you. What do you have to say to Russell before he goes and we wrap things up? Christopher: Thank you. Thanks for being here, and this is a dream come true. This is not the last symposium for Return on Relationship. I call this a movement, not just an event. And it just means the world to me, Russell, to have your support, and to have everyone's support. Everyone that came out to speak, and all of you that came out to attend. I want people to think differently about how they build relationships. I think this is something that's a need and I can't wait for all of you to go away from here and take everything that you've learned and apply it and change your lives. And Russell, you mentioned it when you told the story about Dave, what great news that we got about Dave. He's an incredible individual. I look up to him about as much as I look up to you, and I already thank you publicly, but yeah, relationships saved my life. I'm here putting on this symposium because I met you, and I never would've met Wallace Nelson if it wasn't for meeting you, and relationships to the foundation, for everything in your life; and just thank you, Russell, for being here and supporting me in my first symposium. It means the world to me. Thank you. And all of you, thank you. Russell: No worries, man. I'm proud of you for doing it. It takes a lot to put something like this together and to have the vision and everything. So, proud of you man, for doing it. And it's just the beginning, not the end. This is the beginning of, I think, your business, your movement and everything. So, proud of you and love you, man. Christopher: Love you too. Thank you. Don: Everybody wave at Russell. Thank Russell. Russell, thank you, man, for being here. We appreciate you so much. We'll see you again soon. Russell: Thanks everyone! Christopher: Thanks Russell! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part 2 of this special 3 part series, you get to hear more of Russell’s presentation at the ROR (Return on Relationships) Symposium! In this half, Russell explains how you should provide value to people before you ask them for anything. Enjoy the second half of this keynote presentation, and don’t forget to check out RORUniversity.com to learn more! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey, what's up everybody? This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Seekers Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the last episode for my keynote presentation at Christopher Vos' ROR Symposium. So far, in the episode number one, I had a chance to talk us through some of the history and the background of how we started building our business and I'm excited this next episode's going to be the second half of my keynote presentation. I hope you enjoy. And then afterwards, the third episode, we're actually going to, I opened up some Q & A and we had a really good time doing some of that as well. That'll be the third episode, so this episode would be the last half of my keynote presentation. I hope you enjoy it. Again, if you want to go deeper with Christopher Vos, make sure you go to roruniversity.com and get on his list, read his stuff, listen to what he is doing because he is helping a lot of people to build businesses by using relationships and really understanding how to do the stuff we talk about. I talked about Dream 100 in the Traffic Secrets book. This is what he's talking at a much deeper, much more powerful level. With that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song and when we come back, you'll have a chance to listen to second half of my keynote from the ROR Symposium. Okay. Now, I'll tell a side story because it popped in my head right now and that's what I do, right? About the time, it was after Joe Vitale promoted me, I had a list with certain sites and then I got a phone call from a guy named Tellman Knudson. Anybody here know who Tellman is? Tellman used to be big at our space. He shifted it over to more hypnosis, personal development space. But Tellman messaged me on the phone. He was like, "Hey, Russell, I had this idea. I'm building or I'm interviewing all these people and," I can't remember, "I'm going to interview you for an hour about a topic and then I'm going to put it behind the squeeze page and then everyone's going to promote the squeeze page. People are going to join my list, they'll get your interview and all the other interviews." And I was like, Uh, okay, I think that's the worst idea ever." He's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "I'm not going to email my list to your squeeze page so they can opt in and join your list to get my free interview. I'll just give them my free interview. Why would I do that? It does it make any logical sense." He's like, "Well, everyone's going to promote it and that way, everybody, everybody's lists, people from other lists will see you as well and it's going to be the huge thing for you." I was like, "Dude, that's the stupidest idea ever. No. No." I told him no, flat out, I was like, "This is never going to work, but good luck in your future," and I hung up, right? I was nice because on my DISC profile, I'm a high S, so I can't be mean to people. So I was like, "Okay, well, sorry." Anyway, so that happens and then fast forward three months later, all of a sudden, in one day, I get emails from everybody, Joe Vitale, the Nitro Marketing guys, all the people who are the biggest of the time, emails from everybody and I open up and it's like, "There's this guy named Tellman Knutson, the interview is on his ListBuilder and you should go check it out." And I clicked on it and went to, it was called listcrusade.com, it was his site, I went to listcrusade.com and sure enough, there's an opt-in to get all these interviews and I opted in and there's all these people's interviews. I was like, "What? How do you pull it off? You got the biggest names in the world to go and do this." And I was just perplexed, like how? I'm like, "This is the dumbest idea ever. I should have done it. If it worked, this is crazy. So I found his number, I messaged him, "Okay, tell me, I'm so confused. Can I ask you a question?" So he jumped on a call with me and I was like, "Okay. I just saw yesterday 50 people all promoted your squeeze page." He's like, "Yeah, I've added 120,000, 130,000 people to my list and the last 48 hours." And I was like, "How did you do that?" And it was so fascinating. He said, "You know what, Russell? I called 49 people and I got 49 nos in a row. First one said no, no, no, no, no. You said no. Someone said, everyone said no." And he's like, "But guess what? The 50th person," he said it was Kevin and Matt from Nitro. He said, "I called Kevin and Matt and for some reason, they said yes. And after they said yes, I was like, "Cool, do you know else would be a good fit?" And then Kevin and Matt were like, "Oh, yeah, you should get so and so and so," and then they emailed the Nitro like, "Hey, you should meet so and so and so and so," they jumped over there. Those people said yes as well." And he's like, "The next 37 people in the row all said yes." Oh, he even had Jay Abraham on the list. Anyway, he said, "The next 37 people all said yes and here we are." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, how many of us, including me, would've stopped at the first no or the second or the third? But as soon as he got one cool kid to think he was cool, he was in. Okay? So you start thinking about this, actually, this is probably more for the women. This is embarrassing, I'm going to say this. How many you guys ever seen the movie Never Been Kissed? Drew Barrymore. Okay. Macaulay, can you act this out while I explain? Just kidding. Okay. Here's the story from Never Been Kissed. Drew Barrymore, in the movie, she's never been kissed, she graduates high school and now she's a columnist at a newspaper. She's a big columnist and her brother was the cool kid. He was the jock and the coolest kid and he graduated now he's this loser because he's graduated from high school. Anyway, she's in her day job as a columnist and they're like, "We want article from what are the high school kids doing so we need you to go undercover back to high school and find out about the cool parties and all the cool stuff." So Josie, drew Barrymore's, character goes back to high school and within five seconds, she slides back into the nerd group which they're doing chess club and all these kind of things and she's writing articles about chess club and her editor's like, "No, we don't want these articles. I want the cool kids, the drugs and all this stuff, what's happening. We want the underground dirt, that's the article we're looking for." So she tries to get in and she's like, no one will, the cool kids club will not let her in. So she's home and she's frustrated and then her brother's there and her brother's played by David Arquette and so David Arquette is jealous. He's like, "I want to go back to high school, I was the coolest kid in high school." And, and Josie's like, "There's no way, you don't understand, it's harder, it's not the same thing. If you went back to school, you wouldn't be cool." And it gives the idea for him. He's like, "No, I'm going back to school." So he somehow, and Tammy says it isn't on Netflix, I'm sure it's on Netflix. Anyway, this is your homework. Everyone go watch it. So Drew Barrymore or David Arquette's character goes back and gets in high high school somehow and she sees him in the hallway, she's like, "You can't do this. It's not going to be like, you're not going to be cool like you were before." He's like, "Watch this." So he goes into the lunch room, this is the greatest scene of all film. He's in the lunch room, he's standing up on the table and he's got this huge bucket of cole slaw and he's trying to eat the entire thing, shove it in his mouth and the whole high school's cheering him on like, "Oh," and he's eating the stuff he slams the thing down. He's like, "Oh," and that fast, he's the coolest kid in high school, everybody loves him and he's the man. And then, the next day, he's like, "Okay, I'm going to show you, Josie. I'm going to make you cool." So he goes with Josie, his sister and one of the cool kids sees him and he's like, "Oh, why are you hanging out with her?" And he's like," "Her? She's the coolest girl. She actually broke up with me, she's so cool." All this stuff. And he starts talking about how cool she is and all of a sudden, everyone's like, "Oh," and then all of a sudden the cool kids are like, "Oh, she's cool." And all of a sudden, boom, she gets sucked in. And then one cool kid thinks she's cool, the next, the next and eventually, that fast, she's cool. Okay? That was a very long story to tell you that the secret is, as soon as one kid thinks you're cool, as soon as one cool kid thinks you're cool, you're in. So Tellman Knudson, same thing. He was going back here. No, no, no, no, and he got one cool kid, Kevin and Matt from Nitro who thought he was cool and then opened up everything else. So if you guys are on this ROR thing again, a couple things that I was hoping to get through to you guys, number one is, we're shooting for the stars, that'd be amazing, but don't start there because it's going to be really hard to get in. Build your thing. Find people who are around you who are doing the same, in the same business, same industry and start building from there and start growing. As you do that, it's going to start opening more doors for you. Someone's going to introduce you to somebody else, someone else is going to introduce you and you start building this network of people and you start doing it collectively. If you do it collectively, all, what's the saying? High tide rises all boats. So it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually, it gets easier to open the next door and the next door. And eventually, what happens is, I had this group of people, Mike Filsaime and Gary Ambrose, Brad Callen and Brad Fallon, all these people, all my friends at the time, Frank Kern, all of us who are this level and eventually, at that point, we're at the level of all these other people. But guess what? There's always a next level. And there was this guy that, oh, I looked up at this guy, crazy. He's a giant, he's got big old teeth. Anyone guess who it is? It's Tony Robbins. And Tony's the next level up here. And Tony's up there and we're all down here. And one day, somehow, one of my cool kid friends got into Tony. I don't know how or who it was or anything, but somehow, one of them got into Tony. He had a meeting with Tony and blew Tony's mind and then my friend, I actually I know, it was Mike Koenigs. Mike Koenigs got into Tony somehow, blew his mind and then, so one cool guy, cool with Tony. And then Mike Koenigs introduced him to me like, "Hey, you should meet Russell." He's so and so, and suddenly Tony, I get a, and this is the craziest experience ever, Saturday morning with my kids getting ready and the phone rings, I pick it up and it's Tony Robbins' assistant. "Hey, Tony Robbins wants to see if you can meet him today?" I'm like, "Okay, who is this?" I thought it was my friends messing with me and they're like, "No, my name's Jay Garrity, I'm Tony Robbins assistant. He's in Salt Lake City, he wants to meet with you." I'm like, "I live in Boise." They're like, "Yeah, well, he knows who you are and he meet with you. Can you get to Salt Lake?" And I'm like, "Well, it's a five hour drive. I can jump in my car." He's like, "Oh, we're flying out in three hours." He's like, "How about next week? Can you meet Tony in Toronto? He's your UPW, you can show up, go to the event, walk on fire and then he'll have a private meeting with you." I was like, "What's your name again? Is this a real person?" I'm like, "Heck yes, I'll be in Toronto next week." So the next week, I'm flying to Toronto. Again, I've never been to a Tony Robbins event so I show up with my backpack, my computer, I'm going to sit back and take notes like the internet nerd that I am. And I walk in and people are jumping and screaming and we're sitting there dancing and rubbing people shoulders and I'm so confused what's even happening. And then, we walk on fire and the first time I met Tony actually was the fire walk. He had me in a VIP section, so imagine there's 2000 people in the event and then right next to the stage, he has these two VIP sections and I actually stood next to Chuck Liddell. I didn't know who Chuck Liddell was at the time, I'm like, "That guy looks scary," big old mustache and big old muscles and I was like, but he was there. Anyway, I saw him when he went to UFC and I'm like, "That was my partner at UPW, I know everything was messed up in his life. This is so weird." Anyway. He's probably offended I had no idea who actually was. Anyway, we're in this little group so we could have a chance, to go back, the first time I met Tony is, after everyone leaves the fire walk, we walked through the front thing and they opened the curtain and Tony's standing there and he was like, "Russell, I heard so much about you," he gives me this huge hug and then we walk with him and I did the fire walk with Tony and that's my first impression. But check it out, it wasn't because I emailed Tony and tried to get to know him. I probably emailed him a lot and it never made it to the gatekeepers. But it was because one cool kid got in there and told him I was cool. And after that, it was open. Doors were open. So this is in, in my mind, this is the stuff I want you guys thinking through. Sometimes, with Dream 100, we're going to turn the relationship, we're going to give a list and we're going to send it to mailboxes and that's going to be how we grow our company. There's a place and a time for that, but that's not how it really works. It's this organic thing where it's building actual relationships, getting to know people, finding out about them and their families and how can I serve them and back here, when we're all at this level, it's like me trying to help them like, "Oh, I tried this in my business and it worked. You should try that." We're having these back and forth and it builds these relationships. And then, together, we all collectively rise up to the next level and the next level and the next level to eventually, we are the top level and that's when it gets more and more fun. So that's what I was hoping to really share with you guys, especially because I think, for some of you guys, as I'm sure for many, you look at someone who, like me, who's been doing this now for 20 years, oh, it's easy for us. Anyone will take this call. Yeah, but it's 20 years I've been playing this game. 20 years I've been putting the coins in the deposit box over and over and over and over and over again. When I found out who Dan Kennedy was, I'm like, "Okay, I want to get to know that person, but I don't know how to get there and it was like, well, there's two ways I can get into Dan Kennedy's world. I can work my way in or I can buy my way in. I'm like, working my way could take a decade or two, so I'm going to buy my way in. So I was like, "Okay, I've joined the mastermind group, I'm getting in there." And then I didn't go. I have people, oh, people that joined my mastermind group this last time around, amazing group, but there's different, everyone's got a different mindset and I have people coming in initially and they're like, "Russell, this is so cool. Can I make a testimony with my video? Hey, can I get a picture?" And they were trying to take, take, take, take, I'm like, "Ah." When I went to Dan Kennedy's group, guess what I didn't do? I didn't take from Dan. First off, because I'm scared of him. Number two, I was like, all right, I'm going to serve these guys because I want Dan to know who my name is. I don't want me to message Dan, I want people telling Dan who I am. If I can do that, that's the secret. So I'm in Bill Grazer's group, I'm serving the group, I'm trying to help as much as possible. I'm helping these offline people in this group to launch online businesses. I'm helping them get funnels. I'm helping them do the launch, I'm doing coordination. All this stuff to serve Bill Grazer's group. And Bill's like, "Oh, my gosh, Russell's really helpful." And he tells Dan, "Dude, this guy in our group, he loves you, he loves everything, he's helping our group." And I always wanted to speak at Dan's event, but I'm like, I'm not going to ask him because I don't want to do it, but I'm just going to keep serving and eventually, he's going to have to, because I do so much stuff for so many people, they're going to want to put me on stage. So I get in that group and I'm serving like crazy. In fact, after, I think it was three years in, I wanted to, anyway, I had to fly to Baltimore three times a year and it's not just flying to Baltimore, Bill was in Baltimore. You'd fly to Baltimore and then you'd drive in a taxi for an hour to get to the hotel that Bill would have it at, and after three years I was like, "I can't do this anymore." So literally, I messaged Bill, I'm like, "Hey, I'm not going to re-up this next year because I just can't keep coming to Baltimore." And he literally was like, "This is the deal, Russell, you have to be in the room so you're not going to have to pay anymore, but you're still coming." I was like, "Okay." And for the next three years, I didn't pay but I kept showing up because I provided so much value, he's like, "You have to be in this room because you're facilitating all these things." And then he had me on stage, had me on stage again and then eventually, I remember the last event I spoke at, I spoke on stage four times. I was on stage longer than Dan Kennedy was. Do you think Dan Kennedy knew my name? Yes, he did. He was like, "There's this internet nerd who keeps showing up and helping everybody, he's never asked for anything. We should get to know him," and that's how I built a relationship with Dan and then with Bill and with all these kind of things. And now, fast forward a couple years later, the opportunity to buy Dan's company's there and I'm like, what if he hates me? Because he's not going to approve ... And I literally, I faxed him because you can't email Dan, he has no email, you have to fax him. So I had to open an eFax account, write it on a piece of paper, send it, it's this whole thing. So I faxed him, I was like, "Hey, there's an opportunity to buy your company, but I just want to make sure that you don't hate me or I'm not ... We're going to be working together so I want to make sure this is going to be a good fit." And he faxes me back, he was like, "Dude, every time I've heard about you, it's you on stage talking about how good I am, you always praise my name, all these kind of things. Of course, I would love to work with you," because he knew who I was. I had been trying to serve him for all this time and I'd never asked him for something so because of that, he said yes. And now we're have this partnership and we're 30 days away from watching the new magnetic marketing and you guys are going to die when you see this, it's the most exciting thing ever, but it all came off of that, building these relationships over the long term. If you guys haven't, on YouTube, there's a video, if you type in "Russell Brunson Tony Robbins Dream 100," there's a video documenting my Dream 100 process with Tony, which was over a decade and a half to do this thing, the very first time he actually promoted me. But it wasn't me coming in like, "Tony promote, Tony, promote." If I would've done that, I would've had one meeting with Tony and that would've been the last. It was a decade of me just, every meeting with Tony, "How can I help? How can I help?" People from this company would call like, "Hey, can you consult us on this thing?" I'm like, "Yes." "How much does it cost?" I'm like, "For Tony, it's free." "I'm sure your time’s valuable, we’re willing to pay you." "No, tell Tony, your money's no good with Russell," because I wanted the relationship. And fast forward now, I'm going to get emotional. Oh. This isn't a story that we've publicly told, but you guys know Funnel Hacking Live, Dave had his cancer, if you know the real story, it's literally the worst kind of cancer you have, they give them like a 6% survival rate past eight months, 10 months, something like that. So we were so scared and after Funnel Hacking Live, after Tony off stage, went backstage with him and Tony was like, "How can I serve? What else, what can I do for you guys?" And Todd had the impression, "Hey Tony, this is our friend and partner Dave. He's dying. Is there anything you can do?" And Tony says, "Yes, these are the people. Call this person, call this person. In fact, I'll connect you. Here's the people." Two weeks later, Dave's flying to Dallas, he's with this doctor who does things the opposite of what every other cancer doctor does, Dave spends two weeks down there with him. I won't get too deep into the details, but discovers there's a root canal that causes the tumor, pulls his tooth out, throws the oxygen in there, oxygens his body, does a bunch of things. Two days later, Dave goes back for his MRI where they're supposed to tell him how long he's got left so he can plan with his family. They do an MRI, the doctor looks inside and says, "There's not a bit of cancer inside you. What did you do the last two weeks?" And because of my relationship with Tony, I had access to this guy who saved Dave's life. And Dave's going to be here for the next 20, 30 years because I was willing to put in, for a decade and a half, this relationship with Tony and Tony had a relationship with these other guys and man ... So is it worth it? Yes. Is it worth financially? Yes. Is it worth it from so many more things? Yes. It is. So I'm forever grateful that I didn't ask Tony to promote my thing on day one. I'm forever grateful that I didn't try to figure out what I could take. I'm forever grateful that when they asked for help, I just gave it because I love Tony and because that opened all these doors where, yeah, so whew, not planning going there, but that's the power of this stuff. So when Christopher's talking about this, I'm sure he is told his story. He had a very similar situation where, because of the relationship, his life was saved. So you never know, it's coming into these things not looking for something, but coming in as a servant. And as you have that servant feeling and you're going into it, it's amazing what doors open and you never know what door you're going to need or when you're going to need it or what the thing is or what the, you know what I mean? It's crazy. Whew. I don't know how I wrap that up or how to- Don Mamone: Do you need a minute? Do you need a minute? I mean, I'm going to step in and just say, take a drip of water. That's probably one of the most amazing stories and I have to say that you, unknowingly maybe, and the reason you needed to tell that story was because we had an ongoing over-under bet on how long it takes a speaker to cry on Christopher's stage because so many people have come up and told stories from the depths of their heart and soul. So, hey, I want to thank you for joining those of us that have joined Christopher's stage in which you have an over-under on telling an emotional story, so thanks for that, Russell. Russell: No worries. You set a environment where it was there. Anyway. Yeah, I hope that this was helpful for you guys. Again, I was like, I could go and give you guys the foundation and step one and step two and step three, stuff we talked about here, but I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to be real as possible because it's real in so many aspects of your life. And now's the time, wherever you are, is to start planting those seeds and starting looking at who can you serve, who can you serve and the more you do that, the more doors open and the more things. And it's okay eventually because I think sometimes, people are scared to ask and I would tease Christopher about this. He's been building a relationship with me for now, I don't even know, three or four years and we used to have a joke inside of the office, "What's he going to ask?" Somebody's going to ask something. "I don't know. Maybe he's just going to keep serving and serving and never ask." And then when he finally is like, "Hey, I'm doing this thing, would you be willing?" "Finally, thank you for asking." Because we know, there's always, all of us, when I was dating my wife, I was asking her on a date and she knows my intentions. If I already came date number one, "Hey, can we get a picture just in case if we get married, we'll have the ... " Whatever. If I'd done these weird things along the way, it wouldn't have worked, but like everyone knows, we're in business, we're in things like that, we know what the goal is, but we're trying to feel people out to see if they're genuine or not. It's interesting. I heard Adam Sandler talk about it one time and he was like, "I don't have very many friends." He said the reason why is because, he's like, "Earlier in my career, as I started having more success, everyone wanted be my friend. I realized really quickly they didn't want to be my friend, they wanted something from me." And the higher tier you get, you'll find out that happens. For me, I don't have a whole bunch of friends because I don't know who my friends are a lot of times. It's interesting because there was a time in my life where I thought everyone who was coming was my friend and I started giving people jobs and some of you have heard the story, I built a huge company of over a hundred people and I thought they were my friends and were here because of the mission, because of the vision. And when we had a hiccup and things kind of crashed, they all went away. And it was interesting because thought that they were coming for that. I can't remember exactly where I was trying to go with this train of thought, but ... Oh, yeah. At the higher levels, just Understand that their guards are up because they've been burned in the past and it's like, who's true friends? And if you show up as a true friend where you're giving, you're serving, they know you want to do something with them eventually anyway, that's in the back of their mind, but they're testing, is this person the person who's coming because they're trying to get something from me or someone who genuinely wants to be a friend or genuinely wants to help, genuinely wants to do something? So it's just consistently showing up for a long time and maybe it's not as fast to turning on a Facebook ad, but for the long term stability, what you're trying to do, it's the best thing. Anyway, I hope that helps. I hope that gave somebody something today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special 3 part series, you get to hear Russell’s presentation at the ROR (Return on Relationships) Symposium! Russell discusses the importance of what he calls the “Dream 100”, and how it helps create relationships that support both his business and his personal life. Check out RORUniversity.com to learn more! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey. What's going on, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Want to welcome you back to The Marking Secrets podcast. I got something special for you guys over the next three episodes. I'm actually on vacation right now, Thanksgiving vacation. My wife and my kids and I are all in Kauai, Hawaii. You might hear them giggling in the background depending on how well this microphone picks up noise. And so, I didn't have a chance to record a podcast for the next couple episodes, but before I left on vacation, I actually had a chance to be part of a really cool summit that my friend, Christopher Voss put on called The ROR Symposium. And he had me as one of his keynote speakers, and he had me talk about just my history, my journey, using relationships, and joint ventures, and things like that. The Dream 100, as I call it, to build my business and everything we've done over the last almost 20 years now. And so, it was a really special presentation. It was one that I came to with notes, but not PowerPoint slides and things like that. It was more, I just wanted to kind of share from my heart. And if you know Christopher Voss you know he's a very emotional person and he brings that emotion. And apparently, I found out afterwards, all the speakers end up crying. In fact, I did as well during my presentation. So, there's something really special in the middle that you'll find out about. But anyway, I hope you really enjoy these. They're going to help you to learn how to build joint ventures, how to find your Dream 100, how to build better relationships with people, and how to turn that into more business and help you to get your mission out there to change more people's lives. If you don't know who Christopher Voss is, I recommend following him. He told me that the best site to send you guys to... I said, "Where should I send people to listen who want to go deeper with you and learn more about relationships and how to build businesses using them?" And he said theroruniversity.com would be the best place for you guys to go. So, if you want to go deeper with Chris, go to roruniversity.com, check out what he's got there. And with that said, I'm going to cue the theme song. When we come back, you have a chance to hear the first part of my keynote presentation. As I was kind of thinking through this, I was like, "Man, there's 30-something speakers coming. Everyone's talking about different ways to do this ROR, return on relationship game. And everyone's got different ideas and things, and it got me to back, man, almost 19, 20 years ago now. And so I... If you guys are cool with it, I just want to do some story time and tell you guys my story and some of the things along the journey that I tried, that I... failures, the successes, specifically inside of this relationship, and joint venture partners, and things like that. And hopefully, it'll give you guys some comfort. Because everyone starting different points and sometimes you look at someone like me like, "Oh, well, Russell knows Tony Robbins, and Dan Kennedy," and da, da, da. But there was a day, 18, 19, 20 years ago where I was a little kid scared out of my mind awkwardly trying to message people pre-Facebook. So, I'm sending emails and trying to... and it was scary, and hard, and so hopefully, it'll give you some faith in wherever you are in your journey. Just like, "Okay, this is right. It's going to be good." It's going to be for some of us, especially the introverts like me, this is going to be something that kind of stretches you and feels uncomfortable sometimes, but then it can become something you really love and enjoy and gives you the ability to change the world at a level you never thought was possible. So, that's kind of my game plan. Then after that, we can open for some Q&A and... or whatever we want to do. Or we can celebrate, have a party, or we can sing Christopher's song and let him have a nap. Hey, whatever we want to do, it'll be fun. So, looking back, it's funny, because when I got started in this business, I was still in college. So, I had just met my beautiful wife, Colette, who I think we're celebrating our... I think it's our 20th anniversary this summer, which is crazy. So, she's stuck around my chaos for this long and she's... Gosh, she's the best. But we had just gotten married and I was trying to figure out how to support her. I was wrestling and I didn't want to quit wrestling, so I'm like, "How do I wrestle and do all these things at once?" And so, I did what most people do and I went to Google and typed in how to make money. Right? Which, who here has done that at one point in your career? And you go on this rabbit trail, right? Of like, "Whoa, there's a lot of things to do." And everyone's got a different thing, and you start joining email newsletters. You know what those are at first and you start getting these emails from all these people, and then for me, it was like I was reading blogs and then I was joining... They didn't have Facebook groups back then. They had forums. So, I was joining the Warrior forum and How-To Court forum, and then... Anyway, there's like 20 or 30 different forums. So, all day long I'm reading forums of people, and I'm getting emails, and I'm learning all these things. And it was interesting because I was learning all the different pieces, right? Some people would talk about SEO and that's what they geeked out on. So, I started reading all the SEO articles, and I started learning how to do SEO and backlinking. So, I was like, "Oh, this is how you make money." And then someone else was like, "SEO's stupid. This is how we make money," and they had a whole different strategy. And then someone else had a different strategy, and soon I was just looking at all these shiny objects and I was like, "I don't know which one I'm supposed to do." How many of you guys ever felt that before? There's like 8,000 things. Like, "Russell said funnel. Someone else said this." Like, "Ah." And so, I was in that as well, and so I was just like... I got in this perpetual learning phase, right? Where I was learning and studying, and learning and studying. Then I started watching what was happening. Right? And I was on all these different email lists, but then it seemed like it was coordinated. Once every couple months, all of a sudden I would get an email from 30 or 40 people who somehow I had got on their email lists and all of them would be talking about the same product at the exact same time. Right? And all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, my gosh. Everyone's talking about this thing." Right? And I think the first ones I saw there was an old e-book called Google Cash. And it's how people are making money on Google doing Google ads. It was Chris Carpenter's offer, and he had gotten a whole bunch of affiliates. I don't know how at the time, but he had a whole bunch of affiliates all promote at the same time, so my inbox... And I'm at college opening my inbox and there's like 40 emails from people all talking about this book. I'm like, "This is the thing everyone's talking about. It's got to be the secret." I was so excited. And I went and paid this $67 for an e-book, which no one knew what e-books were back then and we were all confused. Literally, I remember messaging the support team and I was... like two weeks later. I'm like, "When's the book going to show up?" And they're like, "It's digital." I'm like, "I don't know what that means." They're like, "It means you download it." And again, 20 years ago, that was like... that was weird. That wasn't a thing that nowadays we all get it. But back then... And so I download this book, and I'm trying to read it, and I was just like, "I paid $67 for a PDF. My wife's going to kill me when she finds out." But I'm reading it and I'm getting all excited like t's next big thing, and all of a sudden, there's this next promotion and everybody's talking about this next thing. I'm getting all these... like 20, 30 emails. And I was like, "It's got to be this," so I jumped over there, and it's started me on this rabbit trail. And I just remember being confused, and overwhelmed, and all the things a lot of us go through. Right? And about that time... This was probably the very first ever high-ticket... Not even high-ticket, like $1,00 product. There was this guy, and I didn't know who he was at the time, but again, all of a sudden the emails start flying in my inbox. Right? And they're all for this guy. They say this guy is the godfather of internet marketing and he's retiring. And because of that, he's giving away his entire empire, everything he's built. And he called it the farewell package. Like, "This is my farewell from the internet. I'm done. I'm out. I've made millions of dollars, now I'm leaving." And his name was Mark Joyner. And I didn't know who Mark was at the time, but I started reading the emails and the stuff, and I was just like, "This is the greatest thing in the world." Right? So, I remember going to the sales page, reading through it ready to try to buy it for 20, or 30 bucks, or whatever, and the price went was $1,000. And I was like, "Oh, I do not have $1,000. I've never had $1,000." My wife was working, supporting at the time, and she was making, I believe $9.50 an hour. So, I mean, it would take her, man, over 100 hours. No, because you got taxes. Probably 200 hours of her working, so that's a lot of time to pay for this $1,000 course. I remember looking at it and I was like, "Oh, I don't have any money. I'm a broke wrestler." I had just gotten married, therefore, now I'm living off my wife who's making $9.50 an hour as a receptionist where she was working at. And I was like, "There's no way I can do it." And so, I remember not being able to buy it, not being able to buy it, but I kept seeing the emails, and the promotions, and the urgency, and the scarcity, and it eventually got to the point where it was about to sell out. Probably five or six weeks into this whole thing and about to sell out. And they were closing down the cart. And I remember the night before... This is... Again, for those of you who are newer before there were webinars, there were things called teleseminars where you would pick up the phone, and you would call, and you'd just listen to people talk. And so, I called this teleseminar, and on the teleseminar these guys are talking about the Mark Joyner Farewell Package. And it was just... It was going to be gone the next day and you had to get it. And I remember listening to it and being sick to my stomach and laying in bed that night, and I was like, "I have to do it. This is my thing," and being so stressed out. And finally, the next morning I was still laying in bed. My wife woke up and I was like, "Colette, I know I bought a lot of stupid things that I haven't done anything with any of it yet, but I think this is the one. I think this is the thing." I remember asking her. I was like, "Can I buy it?" And she said something like... In fact, I talked about it. I wrote it in the Traffic Secrets book, this story, but she's like, "Well, do you think this is the one for you?" I was like, "I think this is the one." She's like, "Okay, then here's our credit card." And we only had like a $500 credit limit I had to call up my bank like, "Can you double our limit to 1,000?" This is how like green we were back then. And we did it, and I bought the course, and I remember I got the course and there was like 15 CDs, all these interviews. And so, I started listening to the CDs, and what was crazy, as Mark was talking, he kept talking over and over and over again, about two concepts. The first one was the power of your own list. He kept talking about, "You have to have your own email list, and this is how it works, and if you have an email list of 10,000 people, you send an email out to your offer, you can sell a whole bunch of your things." And I started realize, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is literally what's been happening to me. I'm on all these people's email lists. They have a big email list and send an email, and if I buy a $1,000 course, they must have made 500 bucks." And I started putting the pieces together. It's like, "Oh, my gosh. This is how it works." And some of you guys... I'm not going to tell the whole story, but some of you guys have heard my story. After listening to two or three of these CDs I was like, "I need an email list." And I went down that whole journey where I got called a spammer and... Anyway, so that's... Insert that story there. I'm not going to tell that story because it's outside the context of this event. But I started trying to send email and it didn't work. And I was just like, "This thing Mark is teaching me, I need to have an email list, but everyone's got one, except for me. I don't have a list. It's not fair." And I kept listening to Mark's course, and as he got deeper and deeper in the course, he started talking about this thing called joint ventures. And he was like, "Every time you start a new company or launch a new product, the first thing we do before you buy ads or anything is we go and we have these different partners who all already have email lists." He's like, "Go with people who already have email lists, and then some of them will promote and send traffic to my thing, and that's how you make money." And I was like... I was just seeing... You know there's those curtain in front of your face, and the curtain's lifted? I saw the Wizard of Oz. I'm like, "This is how it works. You have to have an email list. If you don't have an email list, you find other people with email lists, and they promote your offer, and then the people buy your product, and then you have an email list." And I was like... It all started making sense in my head. I was like, "Okay." And then I did what I'm sure all of you guys did, especially if you've read Traffic Secrets book... And I didn't know what this was called at the time. I didn't have words for it, but it was basically my first Dream 100. I was like, "Okay. Who's got an email list?" Like, "Mark said people have email lists. We need to find people with email lists," and so that was kind of the next question. And so, I started making my first Dream 100 list. And it was funny because I had this farewell package I bought from Mark Joyner and he had all the people he interviewed. So I said, "Well, this is my Dream 100, all the people Mark interviewed." And so, I don't remember most of the names. I do remember Joe Vitale though. He was one of the names. And some of you guys know Joe Vitale. If you go to mrfire.com, he's written like 400 books. He's awesome. I wrote Joe Vitale down. I started writing other people's names down. And so, I remember I'm building this Dream 100 list and I was like, "Okay, this is easy. I'm just going to email them all, and then they're going to promote my thing, and I'm going to be rich. This seems really awesome." Right? And I'm sure some of you guys have thought of that before. Hopefully, it's not just me. So, I start emailing Joe Vitale, and I can't remember all the other names. Joe's the one that stuck out in my head. I remember emailing them all and then just waiting like, "Okay, they're going to respond back to me, and then this is going to be this big thing, and I'm going to make a bunch of money." And I think I had my first or second product at the time, so it was like I had a product for them to sell and everything. Sent all the emails out and it was crickets. Not one person wrote back to me. And I was like, "Huh." I was like, "Okay, either this Mark Joyner's full of crap or I need to send another email." So, being a relentless person, I send another email to all them like, "Hey, Joe Vitale. Did you not get my email? Because I've got this new product and if you promote it, we can split the money 50/50. It's going to be awesome." Right? Like he's for sure... Like, "I'll even give you 60% commission." Maybe I'll blow his mind. Right? So, I tell him this thing, crickets. Nobody responds back to me. And I remember just being like... I was like, "This internet thing doesn't work." So, I remember being frustrated and just not knowing what to do, not believing this JV thing actually worked. Assuming that it's impossible to build an email list and I was stuck in that rut for a while. Probably, I don't know how many, four or five months of this rut of just like, "It didn't work. I tried." And have you guys done that where you try something somebody told you and then you're like, "Oh"? It reminds me of... Well, never mind. I'm not going to tell that story, but it reminds me of just so many of us do that where we're trying to follow a guru. We try the thing and it doesn't work, and we're like, "Oh, it didn't work." It's like, maybe we just didn't execute it quite correctly. So, fast forward a little while later there was this internet marketing event. It was Armand Morin. It was called the Big Seminar back then. And it was the seminar in the industry. Kind of like Funnel Hacking Live is nowadays. It was the seminar. And so, I remember saving up some money and we flew out to... And I had made a little bit of money online at this point. Not a lot. I was making, I don't know, maybe 1,000 bucks a month or something. So, I had a little bit of money just so I didn't have to yell... borrow more money from Colette's credit card to go and go to this event. So, I fly out to this event. It's in Atlanta. I go to the seminar and I remember thinking, "All the speakers on stage, I'm going to get all... That's going to be my next affiliates or my next people I'm going to be partners with." And so, we're seeing all the speakers and they seem bigger than life. They're on stage, and they're talking, and I was just like, "If any of these guys promoted my product, I'd be rich." That's the thing going through my head. Right? And so, I'm seeing them, writing all their names down. I'm like, "I'm going to become partners with them and become friends with them. I'm going to go meet them face-to-face. Maybe that's the secret. If I meet them face-to-face then it'll be easy." Unfortunately, I'm insanely introverted, and shy, and scared. So, I'm at the event, I see the person walking by. I remember seeing Stephen Pierce. He was the guy at the time. He walked past and I was just like... He walked right past me, and he walked past, and I'm like, "Ah, I blew it. Stupid, Russell. Stupid, Russell. You didn't even talk to him." And I'm sitting there in the hallway and all of a sudden Armand... Actually, I was in the bathroom and Armand walked next to me in the urinal next to me. I'm like, "Armand's right here. What do I do? Do I say something? I can't say in the bathroom. It's so awkward." And he looks over and he is like, "Hey, man. How's it going?" I'm like, "Good." And he is like, "All right," and then walks away and walks out of the bathroom. I'm like, "Ah, I blew it again. I blew it again." You know? And I'm too scared to talk to any of the speakers, but I'm like... For me, I'm like, "This is the key. This is the key to my freedom is these speakers," and I didn't dare do it. I wimped out every single person. I didn't talk to a single one of them. And then at nights, all the attendees would go to the bar. Now, I'm not a drinker. I've never drank in my life. Most people don't believe me, but I've literally never drank in my entire life. So, I'd go to these bars and I was like, "I don't want people to think I'm drinking," because like I have a thing like that where I want to avoid the appearance of evil at all costs. Right? So, I remember I'd go to the bar and I was like, "Ah, how do I..." And literally, the bartender was like, "You want something to drink?" I was like, "Can you give me milk?" He was like, "Seriously?" I'm like, "I don't know. Can you?" I was like "Because if it's going to be a Sprite, people going to think it's some fizzy drink." I don't know. I don't even know what drinks are. Like, "It's going to be fizzy something." So, I'm like, "If you give me milk they're going to know that it's not alcohol." Right? So, he's like, "All right." So, the guy gives me a milk. I'm holding this milk at the bar walking around and everyone's like... All these people start coming to me, which is really cool, and they're like, "Are you drinking milk?" I was like, "Yeah." They're like, "Why are drinking milk?" I'm like, "Oh, well, I'm Mormon, so I don't drink." They all kind of laugh at me, but it opened dialogue when they came to me. And this is... Okay, side note. Interesting for the introvert. Who are the introverts in the room? If you're introvert, I learned something really cool. Nicholas Bailey actually told me this. He dresses weird because he's introverted and he's too scared to go talk to people. He's like, "If I do something weird," he's like, "people come to me and like, 'Oh, nice shirt. Nice glasses. Nice,'" blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, that's what happens. I had this weird thing, and then people came to me. They're like, "Why are you drinking milk in a bar?" And then it started a conversation, and then when I'm in a conversation I can do it. It's the walking up to. Like, "How am I going to go and..." You know what I mean? So scary for me. And so, people started talking to me. We started becoming friends and get to know people, and I'm talking in this group, and it was interesting because everyone I was talking to, they all had businesses just like me, but they weren't the guy on stage with a list of 100,000 people and all this kind of stuff They were here and they had a list of like 500 people. Or I got a list of 1,200 people. They were all kind of at this level. About the same level I was at. I was like, "Oh, my gosh," and we started talking, getting to know each other. And back then it was before Skype or before... It was pre-Skype. It was pre... What do we use nowadays? Slack or Instant Messenger. Whatever. We used to use Yahoo Messenger, or IRQ, or AOL, and so it always like, "What messenger are you on? Here's my AOL chat," or, "Here's my IRQ." Or ICQ Sorry. ICQ. Or, "Here's my..." And so, they give them to you, and so that was how we get to know people. So, I put it out, write it down, and then I remember the people. I remember Mike Phillip's name was on Yahoo Messenger. His name was signanddrive.com. And I remember Brad Callen. I remember Brad Fallon. And so, I started meeting all these people at the bar while I'm drinking my milk, and getting to know them, and I'm writing down all their little handles. And then we get home and away from the event, and so I start putting those things in and I start messaging them. I feel way more comfortable talking through text, through Yahoo Messenger. I was like, "Hey, great meeting you at the event," blah, blah, blah. "This is a picture of me so you remember who I was." Right? And the person would write back, "Oh, yeah. It was really cool. You were the guy with the milk, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." And we'd start this dialogue. And then I was like, "Okay..." Not even thinking that these guys would be big partners someday, but I kind of started getting to know these people. And we were all kind of the same level. And this is the key. Okay? I'm trying to tell stories with hopefully principles you guys can pick from it. So, all these people were at the same level. And I remember because at the same time I was messaging Joe, Vitale, and messaging all the speakers in the event, and none of them are responding to me. It's just like crickets. No one's responding back. I'm talking to these guys. And I remember I was creating an offer and these guys had become my friends. And I was like, "Hey, can you check this out? Do you think this is good? Is the offer good?" And they started messaging back, and all of a sudden they started becoming involved in my business, right? They had a vested interest because they were kind of like, "Oh, I would do this," or, "I'd try this over here. And all of a sudden they started sharing ideas back and forth and it was really cool. And then they would share with me what they were doing back and forth, and it was really, really cool. And I had vested interest in their projects because I was like, "Oh, you should try this, or, "Oh, I did this. You should try this." We built this little group of people. And I don't even know. It was probably four, five, six people maybe that we kind of did this thing. And I remember because about this time is when my very first software product ever came out, and I don't talk much about this product. It was a product called ZIP Brander, and I was so proud of it. And I remember I sent it to Mike Filsaime. I was like, "Hey, here's my first software. Check it out." He was like, "Dude, that's so cool. Do you want me to promote it to my list?" And I was like, "Wait, he just asked me." Like never it happened. I was just like, "I've been asking all these people at this level up here, all the people I'm looking up to, the gurus, the big famous people. No one, crickets, and all of a sudden my friend's, like, 'I'll promote it to my list.'" And I was like, "Dude, you serious?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Okay." And so I give him the link. He sends an email to his list, and I can't remember. I paid him like 50, 60, 70. I don't know. I was like, "You can have all the money. I just want... I need a list. I know the goal. The goal to get a list. I'll give you 100% commission." Right? And so, he promoted and I think he sold... I don't know, he sold five or six copies of my thing, but then I got the money, and then I gave most of it to him. But then what happened is I got five or six customers, but a bunch of people... I had a pop-up on the site. A bunch of people filled out the pop-up, and I got like 300 or 400 people on my email list. And I was like, "This is awesome." And then I knew Mike had a product, and I was like, "Hey, man." I was like, "Dude, I love..." He had a product called Carbon Copy Marketing back then or something. It was a two-disc DVD set. And this is before DVD, so he literally would go and he would print a DVD and ship it out to you from his house. This is how... 20 years ago. Remember, this is before things like that. And so, he said, "Yeah." So, I emailed my list of like 300 people from him the 400 or 500 people I built, so maybe a thousand from my list. I sent the email and I sold like five or six of his DVDs. And he is like, "Thanks, man." And we did our first little cross-promotion, and me and Mike became friends. And then Mike told me. Then Mike's like, "Dude, you know who you should do? I met this guy named Gary Ambrose. You should meet Gary because Gary has got a list too, and he promoted the same DVDs you just promoted and it was awesome. You should get to know him." So, he introduced me to Gary. Me and Gary met up, and I was like, "Oh." And Gary and I started sharing ideas, and then eventually he promoted my things, I promoted his, and then Gary's like, "Oh, dude, you should meet so and so." And I was like, "Oh, you should meet..." And all of a sudden we started this little four or five people start introducing more and more people, and soon I've got 20 or 30 friends all on Yahoo Messenger and AOL that we're talking back and forth and getting to know each other. Right? And what's interesting is that we all kind of helped promoting each other. Our list went from 400 or 500 people to 1,000 to 1,500, to 1,000 to 2,500, and they kept growing and growing. And I was looking at this little group of people all working together. It was like a groundswell where our businesses all started gradually rising together. What do they say? A rising tide raises all ships, right? That's what started happening. And we started getting bigger and bigger. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is so cool." And then we started doing more things and this is, man, a two or three-year period of time while I was in college, we were going back and doing these things. And it was just... It was really, really cool. Right? And I remember one day Mike had this idea, Mike Filsaime had this idea for a product called Butterfly Marketing. Some of you guys may have heard of it, but it was the first time he had the idea. And he's like, "Hey, man, check out the sales letter." He had this huge sales letter. And on the sales letter, he had these testimonials from all the people. All the people you'd want, right? I was like, "How'd you get all those guys' testimonials?" He's like, "Oh, I didn't. I just put their pictures in just as the placeholders as a dream of someday I'm wanting to get these people's testimonials." I was like, "Oh, that'd be so cool to get to know them." And then he's like, "Well, I met so and so. I know so and so who does know that person," and all of a sudden this network started happening, right? Anyway, Mike went and started messaging and eventually got to the person, one of the people, and they gave him a thing, and all of a sudden he got a bigger promotion from a bigger person. And what happened is, is we started doing this. Again, the people I looked up to were way up here and they wouldn't respond to me and things like that. And this group down here became friends. We all started growing together, and eventually what started happening is as we got bigger and bigger and bigger, we got closer to these people. I remember probably, man, two years, maybe three years into this business I had an idea. And I was creating this whole project. It was a membership site. It was called The Lost Files, and it was based on old public domain books, which I could talk about for six years. But it's this geeky, nerdy thing that you can make money with. And so I got excited, I'm creating this thing, and I was like, "Joe Vitale, he's written like 500 books." I'm like, "Oh, Joe would be my dream person." I know Joe had talked about public domain in the past. Joe had actually published a couple books from the public domain. And I was like, "He'd be my dream partner." But I was like, "He's ignored like 40 emails from me. There's no way he's going to respond to me now." Right? But I was like, "Oh, I got to do something." So, I remember I messaged him again this time and I was like, "Hey, Joe. Sorry to bug you. I have this new site." I explained what my site, thelostfiles.com. Like, "This is what is, how it works," and everything. And then the next day I get email back from Joe, and I was too scared to even open it. I'm like, "This is crazy." And Joe messaged me back. He's like, "Hey, Russell, so good to meet you." He's like, "I've been seeing your name everywhere. All these different people keep promoting your stuff. They keep popping up in my inbox. The Lost Files sounds awesome." The way he made the connection, he didn't... I don't think he... He didn't connect that it was me who was annoying him for like 40 emails prior. He just didn't connect it. Or maybe he just ignored it, or he forgave me, or whatever, but he message back and said, "Yes." And I was like, "Joe Vitale said yes." And I was freaking out. And so he goes and he does this... We had this promotion where we had a teleseminar together. He promoted his list. And then at the teleseminar he promoted The Lost Files, and we signed up like 300 members off his list at like 40 bucks a month, which for a college kid, is insane. And it was this one deal, and then Joe was like, "Oh, by the way, have you ever met so and so, and so and so?" and starts opening these doors again. Now, because I've gotten closer and closer, I got one person in and all of sudden it opened up this whole network of people. And that was my journey for the first three or four years. And so I wanted to kind of lead with that because again, I think so many of you guys are like me where you see the people. I meet people all the time. "Russell, you say to build a Dream 100 list, I've got to dream one, and it's just you." And I'm like, "Not a good strategy." I literally said Dream 100 for a very important reason because it shouldn't be me. I do maybe one promotion a year and usually, it's for Tony Robbins. And so, for me to say yes, it's going to be like... We got to date for a decade before it's going to happen, so if you're banking on that it's going to be a long, long time for something to happen, right? I was like, "Instead, go and do things with people at your own tier, your own level where they're looking for things, and looking for cross-promotions, and things will start happening. And then what happened is you start rising to the top, and all of a sudden people like me are going to start seeing you. You show up my news feed. I start seeing emails." All of a sudden it's like now there's this relationship, right? It's funny. There's... This is a funny story. So, one of my buddies, I met him probably... It's probably been 12 years ago now. Some of you guys know him. He's Chad Wallner. He's a chiropractor. I talk about him in the Dot Com Secrets book. But he moved into our area, and so we go to church. We were going to the same church, and so he shows up and he sees me. And he was seeing me online. He knew I was and stuff. He came to me and he's like, "Russell." He's like, "Dude, this is so... I can't believe you're in my ward. I've seen you before," blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And he's like, "We actually have a mutual friend together." And I was like, "We do?" He's like, "Yeah." So, he's trying to build a connection so we can connect and stuff. And it was interesting because he said, "We got this mutual friend." And then he told me the name. He's like, "Here's the guy's name." And I was like, "Don't know who he is." He was like, "Oh, weird." He's like, "He talks about you all the time as if you guys were best friends." I was like, "I don't know who that is. I'm so sorry." And years later, Chad and I had this discussion about this and it was funny because he was like, "Man, I..." The realization is it's not who you know, it's who knows you. Right? I knew who Joe Vitale was. I knew who these people... I knew Tony Robbins. So, I wanted them, but it's not that I know them. I need them to know me. Right? So, it's how do you get them to know you? Well, it's by doing cool stuff in the market that they're playing in. Showing up. Will they see you in news feeds, see you in emails, see you in stuff? Where all of a sudden they keep seeing these things and then they see you. They got to know who you are. Right? When you approach them like, "Hey, my name is so and so," if they don't know who you are, it's going to be really hard to build a relationship. If they're like, "Hey, this is so and so," it's easy. For example, I was trying to do a negotiation with someone the other day. I wish I could tell you all the details. I can't though. Anyway, really big company. You'd be aware of who they are. And so, I tried to get a meeting with the founder of it, and we get on a Zoom call like this, and the very first thing he says, he's like, "Man, Russell," he's like, "I see you like 12 times a day. You are everywhere in my news feed. I get emails from you. You must be the best internet marketer on the planet." And I was like, "This is going to be the easiest negotiation in my entire life because he knows exactly who I am." Right? As opposed to me coming to him and trying to explain who I was. Right? And so it's like, as you're doing stuff actively in the marketplace, people will start seeing that and become aware of you. Right? And that's how you start rising to the top. I get people all the time that message me like, "Hey, can I speak at Funnel Hacking Live?" I'm like, "I don't know who you are." Like, "I'm the best speaker. Here's my speaker," blah, blah, blah. I'm like, "I don't know who you are." Right? But check this out. McCall Jones, who I think is on here, or she was on here earlier, right? McCall, she showed up on Funnel Hacking Live. Then she does this thing, and then she starts publishing, and she starts doing everything, and I start seeing her everywhere. I see her energy and her excitement. I see how she's developing things. She's like using things she learned from me, but developing her own things, which was really cool. Because I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. She's a good student and she's doing things." And this whole thing starts happening, and I see her in my feed. I see her all the time. And my friends start talking about her, and then Monica, who's on this as well. Monica messaged me. There's McCall right there. Yeah. What's up? And Monica messaged me, "You know McCall? You got to..." And so, her friends are calling me and telling me to listen and stuff. And soon, I'm watching everything she's doing. And I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm impressed." I start podcasts. How many... Once or twice I talked about you on the podcast before we even met officially. I'm like, "This girl McCall keeps showing up. She's doing these cool things." And on Funnel Hacking Live, I'm like, "Who should speak on Funnel Hacking Live?" I'm like, "There's this girl who's never spoken on stage before. Right? She's never... Doesn't like, 'Here's my speaker reel. I've got a perfect presentation.'" But I'm seeing that. I was like, "She'd be like the perfect person to come on stage and, and speak." And so anyway... Hey, McCall. What's up? McCall Jones: Thank you. Wow, that's so nice. I'm just hyping you up, over here reacting to all of your stuff, so hey. Funnel Hacking Live. Woo hoo! Russell: All right. But conceptually, you guys, it make sense. If you want to get into, they call it the good old boys club. Like, "How do I get in the good old boys club?" It's the way you get into it is you have to infiltrate it. And it starts finding people at your own level and start playing the game, start moving forward, start making noise, start doing stuff, and then people are going to start seeing you and start becoming aware of you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices