Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Dr. Benjamin Hardy Explains How to Flip Your Thinking and Scale Faster | #Success - Ep. 48
Episode Date: June 30, 2025This episode of The Russell Brunson Show is a deep dive into the Science of Scaling… The new book and framework from Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I sat down with Ben to unpack the actual roadmap behind expon...ential growth, goal filtering, and identity transformation. We talk about why most people let their past define their present... and how to flip that thinking to let your future shape everything instead. We break down the exact frameworks that help top performers set more urgent goals, choose the right “Whos,” and avoid getting stuck on the wrong path. If you’ve ever felt like your current results don’t match your potential, this episode gives you the tools to fix that… Starting today! Key Highlights: The Frame-Floor-Focus framework that anchors every scaling decision Why your future should define your present… Not your past The power of urgency and identity-based goals (and why most people miss this) How “Super Whos” accelerate success for your business Why Ben left Medium and YouTube behind and what we can learn about focusing on the “next wave” We also talk about the mindset behind strategic letting go, why success often requires subtraction, and how your current level of results is often a reflection of what you haven’t yet released. If you’re serious about building a business - and a life - that scales, don’t miss this episode! Get a free copy of Ben’s book The Science of Scaling at: scaling.com/audiobook https://sellingonline.com/podcast https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/secrets Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/russell to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job’s visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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This is the Russell Brunson Show.
What's up everybody, welcome back to the show.
Today we are in Cancun, Mexico
and I'm here with a very special guest,
the author of a brand new book called
The Science of Scaling and a whole bunch
of other really cool books like The Gap and the Gain,
Who Become Your Future Self Now, Who Not How,
Willpower's Not the Way, which ones did I miss?
I missed like three.
There's a lot, that's all right. TenX, these are two X.
I got the important ones.
But he's got a brand new book here.
So he actually came to Mexico for our Mastermind Paradise
and spent the last like four or five hours
speaking to our audience about this.
And then I thought before he passes out,
we should do a real quick podcast with him
and share some of these things with you guys.
And so his name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
I'm super glad to have you here.
So thanks for coming to my meeting.
Anything that I can do with you all do.
Yeah.
Seriously, you're the one, you're one of the best, man.
So happy to do it.
Every time I'm here with you, it's a marathon.
It's like, cool.
I don't know how you have the energy
and like the stamina.
We're at day one right now.
I know, but I know it's like, yeah, it's like,
I'm toast, but you're doing this
for like the rest of the week. You have way more stamina than I have. It's awesome. Well, it's funny, cause, it's like I'm toast, but you're doing this for like the rest of the week.
You have way more stamina than I have, it's awesome.
Well, it's funny, because I didn't look back 10 years ago,
like I used to do events, we'd go till midnight every night,
and now I'm like one night, we do the rest of the night,
I gotta go to bed a little earlier, so it's fun though.
Okay, so there's so many things we talk about,
part of it is like we should talk about every book
and the framework of all of them,
because they're all so good, but instead I wanna go
into science of scaling, but before we go into it,
I wanna talk about one of your earlier frameworks.
It's in the appendix here,
but you talked about it in,
10X was another first place that-
No, this is actually the first place
that it actually showed up.
So like I actually formalized it.
I know I taught it here.
I came here, I came here two years ago,
and your people got the first ever copy of 10X.
But that model wasn't in that book.
And I actually created it after I wrote 10X
but before I was here with you two years ago.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Yeah, so this is the first place it's formally written.
Oh, so we knew way up,
we've known for years here in the ClickFunnels world
that everyone else is.
Okay, this is really fascinating.
So those who are listening to the audio and can't see it,
there's in the, I'll talk about the framework
looks like and I'll have you describe this.
There's three circles, one says past,
one says present, one says future.
And there's an arrow going from past to present
and present to future.
So talk about what this is and then explain,
yeah, explain this part of the framework.
It's so cool.
Yeah, so this is, so one of the core aspects
of all psychology is how we frame time.
So think about how you think about your past,
think about hard events you've gone through,
think about yourself as a wrestler, right?
So we have so many things about our past and those things can be really dominant in shaping
who we are.
And so the linear model of time is where you let your past determine your present.
And that word determine is like a strong word, like determine, I know that you're like being
definite, but when you're determined by something that's outside of you, then you completely
lose your agency.
And so this model of time where you let the past shape the present and then you let the
present to shape the future, although it's the common way we're taught to approach time,
psychologically, it's just inaccurate.
Like psychologically, although we default to it.
Yeah.
So it's the default mode, letting the past determine us.
You can see it in companies where they let their past performance shape their goals,
right?
We did a million last year, let's go for two million this year because of that.
But yeah, I guess the important insight here is that
psychologically, it's the opposite.
Psychologically, the future is what shapes our present
and it's what's gonna neutralize our goals.
Our goals are what shape who we are in the present,
our goals shape how we filter
and make choices in the present.
And then it's us in the present
that determines the meaning of our past.
But this model isn't the default.
This model requires far more agency.
Like you have to actually think about a future
and then use that future to filter what you do
and what you don't do.
And also you have to look back on the past,
even mistakes or problems.
And rather than saying, oh, why is this shaping me?
It's like, oh, what can I shape this into?
What can I learn from this?
And so this is just a more accurate model of time.
And one of their final pieces is that both of these things
co-occur in the now.
They co-occur.
So like how you frame your past and your future
shape who you're being in the present.
Yeah.
But the key insights is that the future
weighs way more than the past.
The future is really what's driving your presence.
That's the key.
So before we go too deep from the business side,
I want like a practical application for people,
because we see this a lot of times
when someone's got trauma or something happens early
in their life.
So it's past event that's now framing their,
it's pretty rare.
Yeah, so we walk through just that direction
and then reverse it back the other way
for someone who would say, yeah,
some trauma happened as a young kid.
Yeah, so I think it's common
when something negative happens or a mistake happens, you fail in
some way or you make a mistake to think that it's the thing that's causing you in the present.
It's leading me to be this way.
And then you put all of the agency to it.
In psychology, they call it locus of control.
So like the locus, it's the location of control.
And so rather than putting the location of control outside of you, you realize, and there's
research on this that says you have to have an internal locus of control in order to reframe
a trauma.
That means in the present, I know that my past and how I frame it is actually up to
me.
And so I have to actively, not passively, actively look at it and give it new meaning.
So usually with a trauma, what it means is that it has,
you've defined it as negative value.
Like negative value meaning it would have been better
if it didn't happen.
Because now that it happened, you know, I'm worse off.
Maybe I lost my leg, right?
Or like maybe I lost a sibling
or maybe my business failed.
So you're saying this is negative
and it's negatively impacting my present and future.
And so the only way to change it is to actually look at it
and give it positive value, like constructive value.
Like, yeah, it was rough, but because of that,
I now know X, Y, and Z, or because of that,
I can now do X, Y, and Z, but you have to give that value.
That's part of reframing is giving it value
and then also getting to a point
where you're grateful for it.
That's a really hard one where you can say,
for me, I'm grateful my parents got divorced
when I was 11, right? I'm grateful that X you know, X, Y, and Z happened because now
I can do this, right? And so now I'm happening to the past, it's not happening to me. But also,
it's in my mind. Like, how it is a great quote that says, the past is never dead, it's not even
past because I'm carrying around my past, whatever I, whatever one I decide to have. And so by giving it value, now my present and my future are better.
Is it like in therapy, like, in terms of psychology,
like how long does it take someone to actually learn how to do the meeting?
Is it fast? Does it take a long time? Is it repetition?
Like what's the secret?
Because you see people all the time and you fall back to it.
Like, well, I can't do it because I was raised here.
This happened in my life or whatever it might be.
I think one, so I don't know if there's like
an exact amount of time, but one thing that really helps
is distinguishing your current self from your past self.
So saying, how am I different from my past self?
What are the things in my past self said yes to
that I would say no to?
What are some of their tendencies
that have kind of outgrown?
So for me as an example, like when I was first
in a PhD program, I was actually like very sloppy in my thinking and also in my work. And my advisor would kind of like
call me out on it. Like I would tell her I was gonna get her a draft and I would get
her like a really bad draft, which is okay. But like she would say like, don't send it
to me until you've actually read it. Like don't just like write it and send it like
actually rewrite and I it took me like a year
to like finally like start listening and like actually like read it again and then like catch the 50 000 typos
And then send it to her and so You know, it's very helpful to look at how you've outgrown your past self, right?
And one of the worst things you can do is say i'm still the same person that was in the past because truth is you're not
And so some people are like this is who I am. This is who I've always been. It's like, no, you aren't.
Let's take some time to actually look at
how have you evolved, how have you changed,
how are you different from your past self?
And the more you get better at doing that,
even a week ago, I might say,
this is what I did a week ago, but now I know better
and I don't have to do it that way anymore.
And so you start to just, you wanna utilize your past,
but also you wanna separate yourself from who you were
so that you can have the freedom to be different.
Yeah, so cool.
But it takes time, you can get better at doing it quicker
and catching the lessons quicker if you choose to.
I mean, it's kind of painful to choose the lessons
because you have to look at it and say,
oh, I could do it differently,
but you don't have to be mad at your past self.
There's no value in being angry at your past self,
just learning from it, building value in it,
being thankful for it, and then just being different,
being better.
It happens all the time.
I don't think it's a one time thing, right?
Cause it's like in your childhood,
but also your business last week, what'd you do?
What's happening to you yesterday, whatever.
It's like all the, it's always looking back
cause anything that's happening,
you can attach the wrong meaning
and then it can derail you for years
if you're not careful about it.
When we live in a cancel culture, as you know,
where people love to jump on someone's mistake, right?
And it's like, and I think it's far more like,
valuable to be empathetic towards someone's past self.
Like, why do I need to like really try to like hammer someone
because of a decision that their past self made?
Especially if they've already like learned the lesson,
like why do we need to take them down
because of their past?
I mean, obviously certain things,
it's good to acknowledge and look at and stuff like that,
but my dad was a drug addict,
and so I could continue to be angry at my dad
because of his choices when I was a teenager,
but he's not that guy anymore.
Why do I need to go back and keep pointing out his past?
I think that's one of the things I heard with marriage
is don't go and point things out about you know, about your spouse and like the mistakes
they made in the past. Cause like that just like, it recreates it. It shows that you haven't let it
go. So I think we can even do this with other people too. And I prefer if someone makes a
mistake, of course it's good to have an opinion of it to learn from it, but you need to just
destroy someone because of what they did in the past. Yeah, that's cool.
So the framework, sorry, I told you earlier,
who are listening, the first version of framework,
there's error going from past to present,
present to future.
And then the second version of framework,
the errors go back where you have your future self
defines your present and your present then adds meaning
or attaches meanings to the past.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I got it right? Cool.
Yeah, so psychologically, the future is what shapes
the present and the present is what shapes the past. Yeah, so focus it right. Cool. Yeah, so psychologically the future is what shapes the present and the present is what shapes the past
Yeah, so focus the more so in the future. Alright, so in that frame now science is scaling your new book
Walk us through like the core framework
I know we don't have enough time to read the whole book to everybody but like just
Conceptually because it is kind of based off that as the foundation
Yeah, so the the core framework of this book is what we call the scaling framework
it's three levels, frame, floor, focus,
and basically your frame,
which is everything we've been talking about,
your frame is what you see in the present.
So it's like, it's everything you see,
it's everything you're focusing on,
it's everything you're thinking about.
All of these things are in your frame.
And you've heard the quote,
you don't see the world as it is,
you see the world as you are.
So none of us see the same thing, right?
We're all seeing the world subjectively
through our own lens or our own frame.
But the really big thing,
which we've already been talking about is,
and this is like rooted in a lot of
just really good thought and research is,
the core element of our frame is our goals.
So like as people, we have goals,
we're thinking about our future
and the goals that we have for our future
is what shapes what we see in the present.
And so there's infinite pathways we could take,
there's infinite information, but what determines what we see as signal and what we see as noise present. And so there's infinite pathways we could take, there's infinite information,
but what determines what we see as signal
and what we see as noise, it's our goals.
And so it's really our future that shapes our frame
or our pathways that we're looking for
and that we're striving for.
And then basically the idea is with this framework
is when you actually start to pursue impossible goals,
goals that you don't know how to achieve.
Like you could call it a 10X goal, whatever.
You make the goal much bigger or you make it shorter.
A lot of people I've worked with,
they have like a 10, 20 year goal.
And I just say, that's not a good enough modeling
of the future to impact the present enough.
So like I see the past and the future as tools
for shaping the present and especially the future.
And so if someone has a 20 year goal or a 10 year goal,
I just say, what would happen
if you move the timeline to two years?
Now all of a sudden, the pathways that they were on start to become noise.
They have to start finding better paths because their 20-year path isn't going to get them
to the goal in two.
And so when you raise the frame, whether it's in scale or timeline, shorter timeline, then
that takes your floor up.
Your floor is the dividing line between what you say yes and no to.
So everything below the floor is noise.
Everything below the floor is a contradiction to the goal.
And we spend a lot of time below the floor, right?
Whenever we're below the floor,
we're saying yes to things that we know are holding us back.
And we're creating complexity and confusion
for ourselves and for other people.
And so having the higher frame or the higher goal
forces you to raise your floor and strip out
most of what you're doing,
because most of what you're doing
can't reach the higher goal. And then it forces you to find and focus on the most efficient and the
most effective paths and so that's frame floor focus. Yeah first time I ever talked about any
of those things by red text is these are in 2x. I remember it's one of the things that like
clicked for me. I can't remember if you said this or it was in I can't remember exactly where maybe
you said in the event maybe it was in the, but when you're in a group or something,
you ask them who here knows ways to double
or triple their business, everyone's hands went up.
Who knows how to like, 100 extra business
and nobody's hands went up.
It's like, there's a million ways
you could double your business,
but there's only like probably one
that you could actually do, the big one, right?
So it's like, if you know your own after the one,
it's like, it cuts out all the noise, all the complexity,
because none of the other things will actually
get you to where you're trying to get to, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's a simplifier.
I mean, that's really why you wanna use it as a tool.
Like a lot of people say,
why should I go for an impossible goal?
I'm probably not gonna be able to hit it.
That's gonna create all sorts of stress.
Now I'm gonna feel like a loser.
I'm like, it's just a tool.
The future's a tool, right?
Even timelines are a tool.
So it's like, a 10-year timeline isn't an effective tool.
Lose that timeline to 12 to 24 months,
now it's gonna force you to really rethink your present.
It's gonna really force you to start looking at all the things you're doing and start letting
go of a lot of it because a lot of it can't get you there in two years and it's gonna
force you to find a much better path.
And so that's part of the beauty of going for massive goals is that there's just naturally
far less pathways to get there.
Like you said, you can, there's 20 paths to 2X, right?
But there might be one or two to 10.
And so it forces you to filter a lot more aggressively
and find those pathways, find those partners,
and you couldn't find those
without having the goal to do it.
I mean, I know you love like the idea of,
changing your thinking and even choosing what you want.
It's like, if you haven't defined the goal,
you're not gonna be able to filter and find it.
And so moving the goal up higher just creates a much better filter for the president. It's like, well haven't defined the goal, you're not gonna be able to filter and find it. And so moving the goal up higher
just creates a much better filter for the president.
It's like, well, all this stuff can't get me there.
So what can?
And once you start looking for it, you'll find it.
Yeah.
Where do you find the most resistance
when entrepreneurs hear this and they're like,
I know my resistance, I'm curious if it's similar.
Other people will be like-
I wanna hear your resistance.
So I'll tell you what's funny is like I was just telling Myron, he's one of your friends
and stuff.
He's a great friend of mine too.
I said it's interesting the further and further I go down this path the more resistance I'm
getting.
Which I actually don't take as a bad sign to be honest with you.
But the main resistances are you you know, why would I set a
goal, you know, such a high goal or short timeline if I don't
think I can hit it, right? They think that they have to believe
in the goal first. And I just say it's a tool. It's a tool for
making decisions in the present for being a lot more honest to
yourself. So one of the resistances is that people think
they have to fully believe they can hit the goal before they
start using it to filter their choices. For my opinion, it's okay if you're not sure
if you can hit the goal.
That's not what it's there for.
As you start making progress towards the goal,
you might build that belief, that commitment,
that conviction.
Another one is just, you know,
naturally the idea of raising the floor and simplifying.
Like that thing, it's really hard for people
to let go of things.
We get very attached to our current path,
our current model, our current audience, whatever it is.
And so a lot of times people would rather just stay
on the wave they're on versus leverage it
into the next wave.
And so people have a hard time letting go
of their current path or their current plan
or their current system, right?
And maybe for good reason, it might be paying the bills
or like you might have a huge team
or you might have a lot of responsibility.
And so going for a 10X often requires you to remodel that,
simplify it so that it can grow a lot faster.
And that means disappointing people, letting people down,
maybe putting yourself in a little bit of uncertainty
because a lot of your income is over here,
but it's obviously below the floor
and it's not gonna scale and it's kind of a dead end path.
And so people who don't know the plan and path
yet have a hard time letting go of their current plan. Yeah. So, okay. So they know the path
becomes easier. Because I agree with my things, the same things like I have team, I have existing
things, stuff that we do that I love that maybe not be as profitable, but I enjoy it,
I get value from it, but it's not, you know,
and so maybe that's things just not clarity enough
on what that goal is to be able to feel comfortable shifting.
I don't know if you know who Robert Gay is, Bob Gay.
He created the Urban Capital.
Yeah, so that was his biggest concern is it's very,
I think one of the hardest things
is choosing the right goal.
You know, like actually choosing a goal and being willing to
let go of other goals to go get it like that's very difficult for people because
sometimes we we think we can like scale 50 goals right and so it's very hard to
face that you probably can't do it all and so actually deciding what should I
optimize for is a is a tough thing to do. It's very hard.
So with your, with Science and Scaling book
and scaling.com and the business,
like can I ask what your big goals right now
for the business specifically?
Yeah, and I think that it's really good
for a business to have a goal, right?
A business is different than a family, right?
And so the business has a goal
and that goal shapes its process,
it shapes its team, it shapes what we do. So scaling.com, the goal is to have 5,000 members in the program, all scaling 10x
within two and a half years. So by the end of 2027.
And so, you know, that that's effectively like 130, 140 million in revenue.
What's the price point of each member?
It's 2000 bucks a month.
Oh, gotcha.
It's fine.
I don't know if I'll file it. Yeah, there's 2000 bucks a month.
The price might go up, but it's just a single concept and 2000 bucks a month for membership.
In order to get in, we have a very high filter.
You have to be fully committed to actually applying the framework and going for an impossible
goal and using that to scale.
And so you have to essentially be committed to 10Xing in a few years.
And even mature companies
that come in doing tens of millions, even hundreds of millions.
Some of them are like, I don't know if I can 10X again.
It's like, well, then you're out.
Well, we turn people away.
You fund your money with it.
Yeah, because we want everyone in the program to be scaling.
Like, you know, I've been a part of a lot of programs, even programs with you, where,
you know, there's different purposes for the program.
It could be networking, it could be connection, it could be just improving your thinking.
But in those groups, and they're all essentially business groups, what I found was that only a few
people were actually massively growing, whereas the majority of people, although they were growing,
they were growing linearly. They were on that linear path of letting the past shape the present
shape the future. And so their growth was more stagnant. And so, you know, even writing the three books with Dan,
just being in that environment, being aware of it,
like the majority of people, even in that program,
aren't actually 10Xing.
And so I just wanted to like really look at it and say,
what if we just made that the requirement
from the beginning?
Like if you're not interested in that,
you should just go somewhere else.
Yeah.
So that's just kind of what we filter for.
So we want 5,000 people to be 10X
and scaling in the next two or three years.
That's cool.
And then reverse engineering that,
then you got to figure out the team,
the process, all the rest of stuff.
Yeah, with the extreme urgent goal,
it forces you to find really clean paths
and you can't do a thousand things.
There's a lot of things I can't do, right?
The floor represents what you say no to,
strategy represents what you say no to.
Even Steve Jobs said focus is what you say no to to so we have to say no to a lot of things and we just
we just have a focused disciplined path yeah it's cool the new bimo vi porter mastercard is your
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Another thing, so obviously you're a book called
Who Not The How, which is something I've quoted a lot
in our trainings and stuff like that.
And our people, I think my community buys into that concept.
But one thing you start saying today
that I hadn't heard you say before
was not like finding the right who's,
you start talking about super who's.
What's here between a normal who and a super who?
I was like, that's amazing,
because they gave me a new framework,
because before it was like, oh, I see the who,
versus like, no, the type of who matters.
Yeah, there's different levels of who's.
So there's a concept, obviously the 80-20 principle, right?
That 20% of inputs create 80% or more of outputs.
Really, one of the, so I read the book,
The 80-20 Individual by Richard Koch.
He wrote The 80-20 Principle.
When I read that book, I realized that, you know,
he talks about, he doesn't talk about the power law,
but other people talk about the power law,
meaning like the very few create almost all the results.
And so I started just digging into that concept
that we're all like one proper who away from a 10X or a 100X. And so the more and digging into that concept that we're all like one proper who away from
a 10x or 100x.
And so the more and more I dug into that, the more I just started finding, you know,
Bill Gates talked about how like a really good code writer is not worth, you know, 10x is
actually worth 10,000x, the average code writer.
Like there's certain people that create code that like literally changes the game, right?
And so there's certain individuals that can create
not just 10 extra results of the average who,
but like literally 10,000 X.
But you won't find those if your goal doesn't require them
because like to the idea of who and how,
like the super who is the pathway.
And usually they're a pathway to a few things.
One could be like really good distribution, right?
Like a who could literally get you the distribution
you need to a goal.
Or they just bring such new capability
that because they're there, they like,
they raise the floor, they transform the system.
And so these are just who's that change the game
and they almost make the impossible goal inevitable.
And you really don't need 20 of these super who's.
Like you might need like one or two
to 10x or 100x your company, you know?
I'm obviously the more the merrier.
But it's just the idea that they,
they are what make the goal possible
and you can't really get there without them.
And they do shift your role, they shift your focus.
Like, you know, not that you change your role entirely,
but it's like chess.
Like when two pieces are together,
their skill and their ability is different
than when they're apart, right?
And so like in basketball, like recently,
and I wrote about it in the book,
like one of the, so the Warriors who have Steph Curry,
they were really plateaued.
Like their ceiling was just like maxed out.
And so they knew that they needed another superstar
to compliment Steph.
And so they traded one of their like marquee players,
Andrew Wiggins, they traded him to the heat
for a guy named Jimmy Butler.
And Jimmy Butler being like a rock star who like,
he's like a freaking amazing chess piece
that when you bring him into the same team as Steph,
it unlocked Steph in ways that were just incredible
because he created so much space, like so in basketball.
Because he's so good, like down below the basket,
all of a sudden people would swarm him,
and all of a sudden Steph was way more open,
than he'd ever been.
Like he was way more open than he was used to being.
So these kind of who's, not only do they transform
like your capability, but they also bring out the best
in like you.
And so these are the types of who's you want.
Interesting.
I was like in the business too, like if you want to play,
like you have to be a super who in and of yourself.
You do.
You know what I mean?
Cause like people always ask me,
well, how do you recruit the right people?
And da da da.
It's like, well, you've got to be the standard initially.
Right?
If you're building a business, like you gotta be the initial standard. You gotta be a super who that does whatever your role da. It's like, well, you've gotta be the standard initially, right? If you're building a business,
you gotta be the initial standard,
you gotta be the super who that does whatever your role is.
It can be anything.
I've seen really good accountants who became the super who
and then built a team and they built a huge company.
I've seen really good entrepreneur who was really good.
But I think step number one, I think for a lot of people
is they gotta become the super who.
I just did an interview with the teenagers over here
and they asked me, what would be the number one thing to tell me about as a teenager, what would you say? I was like, they gotta become the super who. I just did an interview with the teenagers over here and they asked me, what would be the number one thing
to tell me about, as a teenager, what would you say?
I was like, you should become obsessed.
Like, pick one little, don't try to become obsessed
with everything, find one part of the business,
become obsessed with it, and then from there,
you can attract everybody else you need,
but if you're just dabbling, you're not gonna inspire
people to come and go on a mission with you, you know?
Yeah, well, I mean, not to make you uncomfortable,
but think about how you've changed the game in marketing,
right, like you not only changed, like, you know,
you as a super who, like you got so deep in marketing,
and then you clarified and invented the model of funnels,
right, and obviously your technology made that possible
for hundreds of thousands of companies, right,
through scale, and to actually apply marketing in a simple companies, right? To scale and to actually apply marketing
in a simple frame, right?
I mean, even, you know, when I read your book,
I remember reading.com secrets in 2016.
When did it come out?
2015.
Okay, so I read it in 2015 or 16.
By the way, Ben Harvey read my book.
That's pretty cool.
Sorry, just.
I read it in Alaska on a fishing trip with my grandfather,
on a fishing trip with my father-in-law,
and I was reading.com secrets,
and it showed me exactly what I was doing wrong, right?
And so like what you've done as a super who
is you've changed the game
and made marketing easier for everyone, right?
And so like that's extreme leverage,
but I remember reading that,
and I was just starting as a blogger and growing my blog, and I was sending people to my website, right? And my like that's extreme leverage. But I remember reading that and I was just starting
as a blogger and growing my blog
and I was sending people to my website, right?
And my website was like multifaceted.
There was 50 things and you taught me
about the landing page.
And so like literally I start, what happened was,
and I wouldn't be the professional author
if I hadn't read that book.
I would have found probably another pathway,
but like it was like I read that.
I'm like, okay, I'm never saying people to my website again.
I'm only saying them to a landing page.
And all of a sudden, bang, like my blogs,
like and the value of those blogs
because I got email subscribers, 10X,
and it was what enabled me to become a professional writer.
So like, you know, I love what you're saying,
and it takes extreme capability to become a super who.
Like you actually have to become so good at what you do
that it does change maybe the whole game
like you did for marketing,
or it changes at least the game of that business, right?
And it's like, it makes the impossible happen.
Yeah.
Okay, one last question for you.
It's actually going back five minutes to the interview,
but so when I first met you,
you were the number one blogger on Medium, right?
Like the number one dude on the platform.
And then you shut it down. And then you like and then, and then you just, you, you shut
it down. And then you like blow up YouTube and then you shut it down. And I want to talk
about this because a lot of times me specifically, I get really good at something and like it's
my thing and like I'm going to die holding onto this thing. And both times you built
big distribution channels, you like literally just shut them down. I don't know if it has
to do with the book, but I would like to explain that because I think it will give people some
understanding of like maybe a different way to look at the things
that they love so much that maybe are holding back.
Maybe this is selfishly for me to hear.
I think it's great.
So Dr. Richard Ramelt, he wrote a good book
called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.
And he said that good strategy is surprising
because of how rare it is.
And most people don't expect you to have a good strategy
because they don't have a good one themselves.
It's just a really good book on strategy. But again, back to the idea of strategy is about choosing a path,
not 20 paths, and that's really hard to do.
So strategy is really about making a choice.
When it came to medium,
all goals are means, not ends.
For me, medium was a means to
growing my email list and becoming a professional author.
Once I became a professional author,
like the future was like,
how do I actually write,
hopefully game changing books in business and in psychology.
And if I continue to just focus on Medium,
just cause I had it,
like I would have never gone deep on this, right?
And so I would have been stuck on that last wave.
That wave served a phenomenal purpose
and gave me the opportunity to like,
really focus on this new 10X, which was writing different books and obviously, you know, unique pathways writing
the books with Dan that was unexpected.
My publisher at the time was very upset that I was wanting to write those three books with
Dan but I saw that as like a really good book or a really good pathway and partnership for
going deep on what I want to learn.
And then to the idea of YouTube, like YouTube, although it's a good path, like it gives distribution,
it gives eyeballs, it's a clunky path for our goal, right?
If I had 10 years to do it, I could go grow a YouTube channel, but if I have two, YouTube
would take way too much time, too much bandwidth.
It's not high enough leverage for what we're trying to accomplish with our goal,
as just scaling that company.
It's not an efficient enough path.
So the book is a much more efficient path for the kind of people we're looking for.
Also, the kind of people we're looking for are more likely to
read a book or listen to an audiobook than watch YouTube.
YouTube is a great platform,
but it was one that I realized was
a distraction from me focusing on a better path.
Then we all have reasons for certain goals.
I actually used to walk around
Italy and stuff and people would recognize me,
because of my YouTube channel.
Whereas like this, people don't always recognize me.
Face is not normal.
Yeah, exactly.
But sometimes we're optimizing for vanity metrics, right. And
so for me, it was like one of the core concepts of healing, psychology, spirituality growth is
this concept of letting go, right. And Dr. David Hawkins wrote a book called Letting Go. But the
longer it takes you to let go of something, obviously, like the more attached you are to it,
and that's stopping you.
And so getting really good at letting go and stripping things out and letting go of even
goals or vanity metrics or things that you really valued, not that you have to let it
all go, but at a certain point, it's stopping you from the next path.
And so just being aware that like, okay, this thing served its purpose, but now it's like,
it actually is costing me a much bigger opportunity
or a much bigger future.
That's really hard.
And so it's a skill to be able to say, this is now kind of a dead end or this has reached
its plateau.
I squeezed the majority of the juice out of this I can, there's probably much more efficient
and better pathways, which are going to require me to jump into a new role.
So it's just being willing to let go
of even something that's really great and that's working.
Most people won't do that.
I mean, that's very difficult work,
but I think it's required for innovation.
If you think about Apple and things like that,
they had to eventually let go of the iPod, right?
And like other things.
And so most of their products are new concepts
or new models, right?
And so you can only write certain things
so far.
Yeah, interesting.
Well, I'm hoping that everyone, as they read this book,
they pick a goal and then do what I'm gonna do,
which is what you've done,
which is go through the process and figure out, like,
what are the things you gotta cut to be able to focus
to actually achieve them?
It's awesome and it's difficult.
It's funny, somebody asked me after you're talking,
so Russell, what's your goal right now?
And I was like, it's interesting, I'm like, well asked me after your talk, like so Russell, what's your goal right now? And I was like,
it's interesting, I'm like,
well my major goal I had I accomplished.
I think that's part of why I've been like,
you wander a little bit.
Huge.
It's just like, what's the next thing?
I gotta figure that out.
So I'm excited to kind of relook at it through this lens
and then rebuild everything based on that.
So anyway, I'm excited.
I'm excited for you, man.
I mean, whenever you have a goal,
Russell, watch out world.
We'll see what happens. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, whenever you have a goal, Russell, watch out world. We'll see what happens.
Yeah, it's awesome.
I mean, Victor Franco, I'll end with this is,
and I started with this in my talk to your other group,
but, you know, Franco knew,
and he wrote, Man Search for Meaning,
the concentration camp, he knew that
in order to have meaning in your life,
you have to have a goal.
And in order to overcome awful situations, circumstances,
or just deal with challenge, you have to have a goal.
And so humans need a goal.
And so even if you've achieved huge goals,
that you need a future.
Like our psychology and our meaning,
but also just our mental health
is based on striving toward a future.
Once you stop having a future to strive for,
your mental health starts to go downhill.
Like you start to become confused.
And so having a goal
that gives you direction and purpose is essential. Not only for like better decisions but it's also
just essential for like operating effectively. So we all need a goal as much as some people
don't want one. Might as well choose a huge one. If we're gonna flunk through a shoe for them, go for a big one.
Because it'll strip out bad paths. It'll force you to find the most powerful paths
in Super Hoos, but it's no harder to do the bigger goal.
It just requires more letting go and better filtering
and a willingness to go find those better paths.
Yeah, awesome, man.
I appreciate you, thank you.
Where can people get your book?
Is it live yet?
When's it actually going live for them?
So they can actually get it for free,
literally free, scaling.com forward slash audio book.
Ooh, the best version, the audio book version.
Yeah, I mean, obviously you can go get it on Amazon,
but we give away the audio book,
our publisher gave us permission,
give the audio book away.
So, yeah, I mean, obviously you can go to Amazon
and get it if that's the preference or audible, you know?
So. Yeah.
Awesome, thanks man, thanks for being here in Mexico.
Thanks for the time, appreciate you.
Thank you for letting me come, man. Seriously, anything you're up to, thanks for being here in Mexico. Thanks for the time. Appreciate you. And let me come, man.
Seriously, anything you're up to,
I'm super interested in it.
Okay, I appreciate it, man.
All right.