Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - How To Remain Humble

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Don't drink your own kool-aid. On this episode Russell answers a community question live for the Marketing Secrets show. He will talk about how he remains humble as he runs a business worth nearly a billion dollars. Here are the five things he remembers in order to remain humble: You are called to serve. Realize it's not you. It can be taken away. None of it really matters. And do not pay attention to the fans. So listen here to find out what each of these things means to Russell, and how they help him stay humble. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/258-how-to-remain-humble Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Show. I'm so excited to have you guys here. And this episode is gonna be a fun one. So recently we started a new Marketing Secrets Live show. And this is a segment from the show that we actually are gonna be posting here on the podcast. It's called, it's titled How to Remain Humble,

or AKA Don't Drink Your Own Kool-Aid. I'm gonna go through five things that you can do to make sure your head doesn't get too big as you are growing your company. And so it's been kind of fun. With that said, I'm a cute theme song. And when we come back, we will jump right into that segment from the show. So the big question is this.

How are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are 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 answers. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets Live show. This is the first time we've done this live, live, live and I'm so excited. We've got a bunch of cool things we're going to be talking about, a lot of fun segments we're going to be going through with you guys today. But to kind of kick this whole party off, I wanted to go to a question that I've gotten from you guys as a community.

We asked last week in the Facebook group and said, hey, if you guys have questions for Russell, please post them down below. We got a whole bunch of amazing questions back. And I wanted to pick one to answer because I thought it was, I thought it was, I thought it'd be a fun one. I thought it'd be timely and good for everybody here.

So the question from the community that came through that I want to answer, it says, now that you run a company worth nearly a billion dollars, remember when you say billion, you have to do this thing with your pinky from Austin Powers. I was a 90s kid. So now that you're worth nearly a billion dollars, do you have to make a concentrated effort every day to remain humble or do the new challenges you face keep you humble?

So I think that question was really, really cool. I wanted to address that one because I've been in this industry now for over 15 years. And in that window of time, I've seen a lot of people who have come and made a whole bunch of money and then people who have crashed. I've seen people who have gotten really big egos, people, you know, and all sorts of stuff. And I'm not going to lie, I've gone through a cycle as well myself. I think there's times when you drink your own Kool-Aid and you think you're amazing. And I wanted to address that because it's something that I'm actively always trying to work on. I think everyone should as well.

So I kind of reframed this question to something like how I would kind of rephrase it to somebody. So the question was like, well, how do you remain humble? And then I wrote my subheadline. I wrote, aka, don't drink your own Kool-Aid. And I think one of the biggest problems, and I remember this vividly like 15 years ago when I got started. Like I spent the first two years in my basement like my basement, like grinding this thing out and it was lonely and everyone thought I was crazy and people made fun of me and like all those things. Right.

And, uh, and the sooner you start having some success, I think part of you gets this, especially as an entrepreneur, especially as like an athlete for me, it's like you get this, like, like when you start having the success, it's just like, you want to kind of like prove to them that, that they're wrong. Right. And so, uh, I think my head started getting bigger. I thought like I was, I thought, I don't know, I was drinking my own Kool-Aid. I was reading my own bio.

And luckily for me, a couple years later, multiple times now, my company's crashed and burned. And as painful as that process was, it helped me understand some things. So I wrote down basically five things to help you remain humble that I, say are the five things that go through my head all the time as I'm trying to make sure that, that I'm very careful on this, on this path. I feel like, um, you know, for any of us, if we're not careful, um, if we, if our heads get too big, if we stop being humble, like all these things that we're trying to do can be taken away from us. And I, I, I very much believe that to be true. Uh, just because of my cycle of every time that my head gets too big, um, I seem to get humbled. And so, um, these are the five points I had. So number one, um, I want everyone to understand is that when you take on

something like this, that you are called to serve an audience, right? It's not about you making money. Like that's how we keep scores. Like how much money my business makes. I hate to comic club. My man to comic club X, X. Like we're always looking at those benchmarks to have something that we can track our results on. But that's not why we're in this game. Like we are called to serve somebody, right? Like any of you entrepreneurs who are here today, like you've had that calling.

You're like, oh my gosh, like I'm here to serve this type of person or this person or this was me five years ago. I figured out how to solve this problem. I'm here, I'm called to serve that audience,, that, that audience. Right? So first thing understanding is that, that you're not here as like, look how great I am. It's your, it's literally for me, I believe that entrepreneurship is a calling and a, and this calling that you've been called to serve this group of people. And when you think about it that way, it's different. It's not about you. It shifts the

focus from like, look how great I am to like, how can I help these people? And how can I put them up on a pedestal? Okay. If you look at a the last three or four years, you know, the marketing that we do, if you notice like it's less and less ever about like, look how great Russell is, because first off, that's annoying. And second off, nobody cares. Instead, I want to take the people that are having success in our community, I put them up on a pedestal. I've been called to serve them. I've not been called to serve myself.

Right? So that's the first thing you understand is that you have been called to serve. Number two, you have to realize that it is not you. Okay. Um, I think sometimes we get this great idea, right? I'm a genius. And it's like that, that may be like, I don't know. I don't personally believe that. I don't think like we just, I don't think that the idea is us. The idea comes to us, right? Like we're blessed with these ideas. We're blessed with inspiration. We're blessed with like, like seeing the vision of where we need to go. And those things are, are, um, they're not us. They're given to us. And so you have to realize that, that it's not, it's not you. So it's not

you making this greatness. It's you because you're, you're following a path and you're doing the right things that you are given these insights, these ideas, these, these things. And so it's not you. And so the more you think that, oh, this is me, the less those, those ideas, those inspirations will come to you. So it's a very fine line. When your head starts getting big, those things will become less and then things start shrinking for you. And the more you realize that it's not you, that you're just there receiving these ideas, receiving inspiration, then it gives you the ability to be able to continue to get those things. That's number two. Number one, you're called to serve. Number two, realize that it is not you. Number three, all this stuff that you are creating can be taken away at any second.

I can literally wake up tonight and get a text from somebody and be like, hey, Russell, ClickFunnels is gone. And then you may think, no way, Russell, you're too big. It's like, no, I see that happen all the time with different companies. It could be a government agency comes and shuts you down. It could be your servers crash. There could be a million things that could happen. Some of you guys remember a ClickFunnels story. We were a year, year and a half into ClickFunnels and I was flying to London to go speak at this event. And when I landed the plane, I got off and initially I didn't have internet because I didn't get an international chip in my phone. I plugged one in. As soon as I did, my phone's blowing up and ClickFunnels servers were down.

We were down for like seven or eight hours. were like on the brink of losing ClickFunnels the whole entire thing, four years ago. Like when we first started this whole journey, we almost lost the entire thing and we would have lost the company because of a database issue that happened. Now since then, we've gone insane and hired insane amounts of people

and infrastructure stuff to make sure that stuff doesn't happen again. But it could happen for any of us, right? Any of our businesses, we could lose it. And so it's understanding like this can be taken away at any given time. And it could be for any of us, right? Any of our businesses, we could lose it. And so it's understanding like this can be taken away at any given time. And it could be, you know, a million different things. I've had close friends in the last couple of months

that have passed away from health issues that was taken away from them. There's government interactions, there's a million different things. And so if you think it's all you, I think a lot of times that's when we get humbled. I've had multiple times my company has crashed and I realized, you know, prior to that, I think, oh, I'm a genius. Look how great it is.

And when it's taken away, it's like, wow, it really wasn't me. Um, there's so many other, uh, things that we need to be grateful for that are happening that keep us to keep this moving. So that's number three, it can be taken away. Number four is that none of this stuff really matters when all said and done, like it doesn't matter as much fun as entrepreneurship is, business is always kind of things like it doesn't really matter. Last all is said and done, like, it doesn't matter. As much fun as entrepreneurship is, business is, all these kind of things, like, it doesn't really matter. Last night I was with my kids. They had a wrestling match. I remember going there and watching it, and both my kids did awesome. They both won their matches. Dallin had, he was wrestling the kid who was the district champ last year. Dallin out there won. We're going crazy. We're screaming, and I was like,

I was sitting there. I'm like, this is what matters. Like me spending time with my kids, my family, that's what matters. It's not this, you know, I, I, I've, um, on Instagram, I think two or three times in the last month I've made posts where I'm just like, like business is what you do while you're waiting for your kids to get out of school. Business is what you do while you're waiting for your wife to come home. Like, like this is kind of the thing to keep us occupied, have some fun, hopefully serve some people. But like when it all comes down to the thing that really matters is our families. And so I think when you realize that that none of this stuff really matters that much,

it gives you a different perspective. And then number five, and this is one that's really hard, is don't pay attention to the fans. I think sometimes as you start growing, people start talking how great you are and you just be very, very careful. It's like, what are the mermaids, the sirens, like the sirens who are in the water and they're

singing this beautiful music, right? And you get closer and closer and then they come and they eat you and they destroy you. Um, uh, we were anyway, that's a long story. I used to tell my kids about that and we were in the swimming pool and I was like scaring them and it was really funny, but that's another story from the day. Um, but you have to be careful. Like, like the, the fans, the people who you're serving will look at you as if you're something great, something special. And they will tell you that over and over and over again, as much as I love hearing it, I have to like, listen to it. And I have to like, I have to like put it on the shelf. You can't, um, if you, if you do that, you keep, if you keep listening to what the fans are saying, um, it becomes very, very hard.

And, um, it's funny. Um, Sean Stevenson, who's a close friend who passed away a little while ago, I remember we were joking one time, we were hanging out, and we were joking about our wives, and we were like, we love our wives. And he said, one of the things about our wives is like our wives aren't fans. He's like, they fell in love with us and they love us,

but they're not our fans. And he says, it's nice because you come home and you feel like you're all awesome, and then there's your wife who loves you, but she's not a fan. And she's just like, hey. And it instantly changes this whole thing. And I'm so grateful for, for a wife. Who's not a super fan. Who's, who's realistic. Who's just like,

this is what it is. And so, um, I think that it's important for all of us to have people in our lives around us who aren't fans, who are like the people who love us, uh, because it helps take the ego off and let you focus on what's actually important. So how to remain humble. Those are the five things. Number one, you are called to serve. Number two, realize that it is not you. Number three, it can be taken away. Number four, none of it really matters.

Number five, do not pay attention to the fans. If you do that, as you are growing and you are serving and you are changing people's lives, it'll help you to focus on that and not get a head that's too big. All right, hope that helps. On the next episode of Marketing Secret Show, I'm going to be taking you guys inside of my inner circle room to a private conversation from one of my favorite people. Her name's

Annie Grace. She's going to be sharing her story about the difference between a funnel and an hourglass. Stay tuned for that episode. You are going to love it. It'll probably change your life.