Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Don't Discount The Education You're Getting From Each Of Your Failures

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

A late night story session with Russell, talking about more of his failures that built his foundation. On this episode Russell looks back on things he did over a decade ago, and why he is bringing some of those things back, even though they were initially failures. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in today's episode: Find out what kinds of things Russell heard were good ideas, which he then tried, but didn't have success with. See why some of those things he considered failures are coming in handy now that he has Clickfunnels. And find out why it's important to try things, even if you fail at them. So listen here to find out why even when you consider something a failure, it has been a valuable part of your journey. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/don-t-discount-the-education-you-re-getting-from-each-of-your-failures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Right now I'm walking up my stairs in my house, about to go to bed, but there's just something too cool on my mind that I got to share with you right now. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets.

All right. So I just wanted to share a story that hopefully all you guys will have the same story like 10 years from now or 12 years from now or 15 years from now, whenever. But when you're living it in the moment, it's kind of annoying. But looking back in hindsight, it's like the most amazing gift ever. So let me tell you what I'm talking about. So I first joined my first mastermind group, um, over a decade ago now. And at the time I didn't know how to do anything. Um, I had a couple of websites, had a little email list or selling stuff. And, um, I joined this mastermind group. It was Bill Glazer's mastermind group. And I get in this group and at the time, this is right before the real estate bubble popped, like in whatever, 2008, right? Or whatever that was. And so in the group,

there are 18 people and nine of the 18 people were real estate coaches, right? Teach people how to make money in real estate. And the other nine were all sorts of other weird businesses. So it was kind of cool. So I came into this room and all these people doing amazing things. I'm sitting there and the first guy gets up and he talks about, he has a call center. I was like, Oh my gosh, I should have a call center. And the second guy gets up. He's like, Oh, I do live events. Um, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I should do live events. And third guy gets up. He's like, I do local events. I'm like, I should do local events. Next guy gets up. I run radio ads. I'm like, I should be running radio ads. And, um, luckily for me at the time,

I was super naive and didn't know that I probably shouldn't do all of them at once. So instead I'm like, I should be running radio ads. And luckily for me at the time, I was super naive and didn't know that I probably shouldn't do all of them at once. So instead I'm just like, dude, I need to do all of them at once. And so after my first set of meetings, I go back home and sure enough, I tried to do all those things at once. And so for example, one of them was, I remember there's a guy who was doing these local seminars and he would run ads and direct mail and he'd fill these local seminars and then people would come locally and they'd come to seminar. He'd sell something to them. And then from there he'd take them to another event and had this whole process. Right. And so I got home and just started even thinking, I'm like, we're going to run local seminars. And so we went and booked a holiday in, we went and I was like, how do we fill this event? This is pre Facebook, pre MySpace, pre like this,

this is a decade plus ago. Right. And so I was like, well, I don't know, we could rent direct mail. So I called like a lit, like I call up some list broker that I found. And I was like, do you guys have direct mail for people in Boise who want to get rich on the internet? And they're like, um, sure. We'll sell you a list like that. So they sold me a list of 5,000 names. And then I was like, I got to send a direct mail piece out. I've never written direct mail piece before, but I was like, I just got to figure it out. So I remember I made this postcard and then I was like I got to send a direct mail piece out I've never written direct mail piece before but I was like yeah I just got to figure it out so I remember I made this postcard and because it was in Boise I had a picture of me wrestling at Boise State so I had a picture of wrestling on this business seminar it was like learn how local Boise State wrestler makes money on the internet come to this free event and uh and so we had a phone number for people to call

to come in RSVP and then I was like like, okay, we have the direct mail piece, but we've got to figure out other ways to fill the event. What should we do? We're like, we should do radio ads. And so I called the radio station. I'm like, hey, I want to run a radio ad. I'm like, okay. And I'd been learning about copywriting.

So I wrote my own little ad, took it to the radio station. And the host or the, what do they call him, the DJ or the whatever it's called, the person at the radio station who talks on the radio, um, who's going to read the ad. He's just like, Oh, this ad's horrible. I'm just going to freestyle it. And so he like wants his own ad. I'm like, no, we have to understand like, this is how direct response copy works. We kind of fought back and forth. And so we'd be making a hybrid ad that he read that had a call to action for the live event. So we run this local live event and we run the direct mail and the radio ads and we get, I don't know, a couple hundred people, the RSVP. And so we set it up where we're going to

do one event in the morning, one afternoon, one at night. And, um, and so we did that. And, and the, I don't know how many hundreds of people signed up. We only got a few that actually showed up for each event and then they showed up and we didn't know what to sell. So I try to sell these really weird things that didn't really work. And I remember I did three presentations that day. And the first presentation, there was probably like 30 people in the room. It went really well. I had my suit and tie and my shaved head and my glasses on. And I did my little thing.

And I think I sold a $100 workbook. We sold a few of them. And then the next group came and there was like three people showed up. And I was like, it was so awkward. I gave the same presentation I had done earlier in 90 minutes. I did it in like 25 minutes because it was just like I was like it was so awkward I gave the same presentation I had done earlier in 90 minutes I didn't like 25 minutes because it was just like I was nervous I was talking even faster than Russell normally talks which is pretty fast and then third one and I don't think I sold any of that group and then third one came is a little bigger and I sold a couple and I got made like I don't know

made four or five hundred bucks at this little event so we had ran and we probably spent five grand trying to probably mourn that between direct mail and radio and everything. Anyway, colossal failure. I'm like, I'll never do local events again. That was the worst idea ever. And then someone else was like, well, you should do like your own big events. I was like, Oh, cool. I could do that. I went to an event one time I should be able to run an event. And so we just like run into hotel room and started trying to fill an event. And it was harder than I thought it was going to be. Um, and, um, luckily I met a partner, Stu McLaren, uh, Stu and I did two or three events together, which is awesome. Cause

he had actually run some events, had some, I can't remember. I think the first event we ran, people showed up and we're just like, all right, sit down. We had no idea what to do. We started running with Stu and Stu's like, we need to get name tags for people like oh that's a great idea like you need to register people like oh yeah we didn't even think about that and like they had a process to make these events we did two or three events with stew where we had i remember we'd go to like walmart and buy a hundred dollar printer and we'd like print we'd go print off all the name tags and then the end of it we like raffle off the the printer like the first person who does whatever will give you a free printer the printer we had bought because we didn't want to like pack it home and ship it back to our houses.

Anyway, we did three or four of these little events with Stu and made a little bit of money and learned a lot of good lessons there. And I remember the last event I did was this one in Salt Lake. And it was the back of, we had a product called the 12-Month Millionaire. And it was an interview I did with Vince James where he had made $100 million in 23 months. And it was a six-hour interview I did with him. And so we sold a product called the 12 month millionaire and it was an interview. I did with Vince James where he had made a hundred million dollars in 23 months and it was a six hour interview I did with him. And so we sold that product and on the backside we, um, we gave everyone who bought a ticket to this live event.

We're going to teach online offline fusion marketing, you know, like how to use offline tactics with online. I was so excited for this event. And I think we're like three or 400 people who had RSVP'd saying they're coming to the event. Right. We'd still, I think we sold like 9,000 copies of that product, which was amazing. But like 300 put the hundred, I think it was a hundred dollar deposit down to say you're coming to the event. So we had this event, we had 300 people coming to us. We built

out the whole thing. And, um, and then we, it's so embarrassing. We get to the event and like less than a hundred people showed up to it and so this huge room is completely empty we had no stage there was like this little ghetto projector and we did the event and i think we ended up making we sold something in the event and making a little bit of money but not a lot and that was the time i was like i will never in my life do live events again this is that was it we'll never do it again like it's i told my team like we'll never do it again um and then fast forward a little longer, a little while after that, we like, you know, someone told me we should build

a call center. So like, we're going to build a call center. So as Russell does, instead of thinking, I just went and like found somebody who had to do a call center. We hired them, hired more people, built out a team, got some cubicles, got some phones, started selling leads and started selling stuff and started working. And then we started growing. And next thing I know, I woke up one day and we had 80 salespeople in the room. And I'm like, what in the world is happening? Like, why am I, like, what am I doing, right? And if you've heard some of my stories about how that whole crash and how it fell down,

but we had figured out, you know, I learned that model and imperfectly. And man, so many more. We did free plus shipping offers with forced continuity that we had learned and made money with, but then we got shut plus shipping offers with forced continuity that we had learned and made money with, but then we got shut down because of the forced continuity we did. Just so many things like that, right? And at the time, like I went through the process, I learned the lesson and then I was like, I'll never do this again because it was horrible and

it was painful and like it didn't work. But now it's crazy. A decade later, and I'm looking at ClickFunnels as we're growing it now and i'm like okay how do we grow this and i'm going back in time a decade ago and i'm like remember we did those live events locally that didn't work because i didn't understand the model i didn't understand what i was selling to have a right offer i think those would work now like a couple of tweaks and that that model would work so right now we're working on building out a local model we're filling up local events and sending speakers to these events, right? Funnel Hacking Live, I do a lot of click funnels

and I swore I'd never do events again. And people were like, we need an event, we need an event. I'm like, no, I'll never do an event again. And finally we agreed and we did Funnel Hacking Live number one, which had 600 people. Number two had 1,200. Number three had 1,300. Number four had 3,000.

This year we're gonna to have 5,000. And we have probably one of the biggest marketing events in the world now. By far the best. I'm not using cynics and bias. It literally is the best. If you're not coming here, you're insane. Anyway, that came on the back of this thing I tested with years ago and it failed. But I learned the pieces and the process.

And I learned enough of the skills to know when I needed it to, to like dust it off, bring it back out and this time do it right. Um, the call center, like we built this huge call center up and we shut it down and then click funnels came out. I swore like we will never do a call center. We're never gonna do a call center. We're not going to build out a sales team. And sure enough, guess what I'm doing right now? We're building out a sales team. We have a front end sales team calling new leads. We got back end sales team, uh, selling migration packages and things. And we're building out a sales team. We have a front-end sales team calling new leads. We have a back-end sales team selling migration packages and things, and we're building that out again right now. And again, it's something I swear I'd never do again,

but it's something I learned, cut my teeth on, and now we're doing it correctly. We're doing it right. We're doing it in a way that'll continue to grow the company. And so it's, and there's more. These are just two or three different things off the top of my head that we're doing now that I tested a decade ago. Now we're finally doing it.

So I'm sharing with you guys because I'm guessing if you're at all like me, you've tested and tried a lot of things. And some of them haven't worked. At the time, you probably were like I was and saying, local seminars are a scam. I would never do this. This is the worst business ever. Whoever told me to do that was a moron, right? But it's just the context, the situation wasn't right yet. But now I have that skill that I want to bring back, right?

And so if you get the same thing, like I know that you're trying things, you're testing things, some things aren't working. But I promise you that like there's a reason why you're learning it, okay? And just because the first funnel or second or the third or the fourth or fifth or sixth or tenth offer doesn't work, it's okay because you're learning how to make offers, right? I'm working on a presentation. I'm speaking at Garrett White's Warrior Week next week. And one of the sections I'm talking about hooks, story, and offers. I'm talking about how you need to make offers.

And whoever makes the most offers in the marketplace traditionally wins. And then I'm going to actually show all the offers I created from the beginning of time until ClickFunnels. A lot of people think, oh, there's probably 10 offers or a dozen offers or a couple dozen. But there are over 100 offers I made before I made the ClickFunnels offer. Over 100. And these weren't just things I threw out quickly on a Facebook Live. It's like 100 full-blown funnels with headlines, sales video, product, creation, all those things. Over 100 different offers i created before we created click funnels offer okay and so it's it's all those things it's just a consistency

of doing it and doing and doing it because you have no idea which one of the skills you learn in this process you're going to come back and later use to scale your empire to serve more people to get your message out to the market same thing happened in network marketing i can't tell you how many times um you know i've tried marketing, had ups and downs and pros and cons. And it's funny because last week, David Fry, he's one of my favorite people I've ever met. He posted this whole thing like, if I was still doing network marketing, this is exactly what I'd do. And he mapped out this whole strategy of how he'd do one of these local events and how he'd film and how he'd do it and how he'd build the whole thing up. And I was just like, oh my gosh, and there's three or four ideas.

I remember when we did local events for network marketing. We literally ran our own local events for that. And what do we do? And why do we do it? And how did it work? And what are the things we've learned that we can bring back and plug back into our thing? In fact, I remember one time we were in send out cards. And we had this idea like what if we um um put an ad in craigslist looking for people who

run home parties and pay them a hundred dollars maybe it's three hundred dollars whatever it was the same cost as it was to be a distributor but paid them to come and consult us on how to run a home party for this new company that we were trying to roll out this is like the greatest idea ever it didn't work well it kind of worked but, so we put ads on Craigslist and we had like, I don't know, 20 people who were like home party experts. They'd run home parties for different companies and they agreed to come and train us in a group for $100 or $200, whatever it actually was. And so we sat down and we showed them the product and then they were supposed to like

kind of write out a home party and like a script and a process and show it to us. And so they had to try the product, test it out and like use it. And then when it was done, what we did is get each person come one-on-one into a room back with me. And I'm so proud of myself for trying this. And I was like, Hey, what do you think about the product? Like, Oh, it's amazing. It's okay.

Well, we owe you $300 to do this thing. Or, um, I think it was $100. You pay $100 for your time. Or I'll pay $300 to cover your distributor fee and send out cards. Which would you rather do? And a couple people were like, I just want $100. And then like half of them were like, pay the $300. I'll become a distributor.

Like you sold me on the product. I'm now sold on it. And then our thought was like, oh my gosh, we have these people now who they know how to do home parties. They just signed for a company. Maybe they're gonna go and do home parties, right? And a couple of them did. It never grew really big, but conceptually it was brilliant, I think.

Anyway, it might've been the worst idea ever, but it was something we just tried, right? And there's so many things we tested over and over and over and over and over again, trying to figure out what was gonna stick. And so anyway, I just hope this gives you guys encouragement for those who are trying things aren't working. You're not working as effectively as you wanted, or you thought, man, I thought for sure this is,

I thought this webinar Russell told me is going to be the biggest thing in the world. I tested the webinar. It didn't work. And you're all angry, but it's like, look, maybe it's just because it's the wrong offer. Maybe you got to make another offer or change the offer or try a different product or try a different venue. Maybe instead of doing a webinar, maybe it's a teleseminar, maybe it's a live event. Maybe it's a local webinar, maybe it's a teleseminar. Maybe it's a live event. Maybe it's a local, like who knows? But like the skillset you're learning each of these steps along the way is going to help you for the next piece and the next thing.

And so don't discount the education you're getting from each of your failures. So that's the message for today. I'm going to go to bed. I got to get up tomorrow morning at five because I'm working on the Traffic Seekers book. So I got a couple hours of sleep and I'm back up at it. So I'm going to bounce to bed. I got to get up tomorrow morning at five because I'm working on the Traffic Secrets book. So I got a couple hours of sleep and I'm back up at it. So I'm going to balance. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot of it, post it on Facebook, Instagram, anywhere else you like to be social. Tag me on it. Do hashtag marketing secrets. And I always love seeing those and make sure you guys are actually listening. Thanks so much for everything, guys. And we'll talk to you soon. Would you like to see behind the scenes of what we're actually doing

each day to grow our company? If so, then go subscribe to our free behind the scenes reality TV show at www.funnelhacker.tv.