Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - Lean In...

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

During your troubles you've got two options, run away or lean in. On this episode Russell talks about something his friend and former employee Steven Larsen said to him in passing, but had a big impact on him. Here are some of the awesome things to look forward to in this episode. What Steven meant when he told his sister to lean in, instead of giving up. What would be different in Russell's life if he hadn't chosen to lean in at different times. Why you should always lean in when times get hard instead of walking away. So listen here to find out what would be different in Russell's life if he had walked away instead of leaning in. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/lean-in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good morning, everybody. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I've just dropped my kids off at school, and now we get to hang out. 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. Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing amazing. I am trying to get on a better rhythm of doing podcasts consistently. I have this really weird thing where I'll get in the mood and I'll do 10 in a row and then I'll get out of the mood and I won't do something for a little while. I'm trying to be more consistent where we're getting two or three a week. I apologize for my inconsistency, but I'm grateful for you guys and for listening in. and hopefully you get good stuff each time. It's been fun doing this now for 500 plus episodes.

If you haven't gotten the Marketing Secrets Black Book yet, go to marketingsecrets.com slash black book. But some of you guys know Julie Stoyan and I went through and she listened to every episode and then took notes on them all and then rewrote them into like a book of the top 99 takeaways from this podcast. So to shortcut your life a little bit, go and get those. Print them out, as everyone's been doing, print them out and read them, but it'll catch you up on the marketing secrets, the last five years of the best and most important ahas and things like that. But that's a little freebie for you guys.

But today I had a specific thing I wanted to share with you guys. I've been wanting to talk about this for a little while, but life's a little crazy right now trying to get done some big projects. This month of October is crazy. I'm speaking all over and flying a bunch of places. We're doing an event with two Comic Club X members and a whole bunch of other things. Rebuilding the whole company structure. Anyway, I could go on and on.

But it's so much fun. I love what we do. I love that we get to play this game every day. Anyway, but what I want to share with you guys today is it was kind of fun, actually. Steven Larson was at the office the other day. Some of you guys know we launched the One Funnel Away Challenge, which has been nuts. We had over 7,500 people sign up for it. It's a $100 challenge, so 7,500 people paid $100 to be part of it.

And every day for 30 days, Stephen jumps on and yells at everybody and pushes them forward through some curriculum that we're taking people through. And again, it's called the One Funnel Away Challenge. A lot of you guys are part of it. If you're not part of it, then it's because you didn't pay attention to the 30days.com launch we did recently. But anyway, for all of you guys who are in there, it's been so much fun. And so it's fun, though, because Steven comes in the office every day, which is, you know,

I miss having him there. He used to be there every day. And, you know, he had to go out and start his own business and all that kind of stuff, which I am proud of him for. I know I'm just teasing. It is really cool. But I'm grateful to be able to kind of pull him into that because it's fun to see him every day

and see him in his element, like where he's jumping on and training and motivating and pushing and just doing his thing. And it's amazing. This new program, the One For Only Challenge, is going to change a ton of people's lives. And I'm excited for all you guys who are going through it. But I digress. The reason why I want to tell the story is because he was in the office and we're

talking about a bunch of stuff. And we're actually talking about the two comma club X coaching program, which is something we sold at last funnel hacking live. And I think we had 650 ish people join it. And it's not a cheap program. It's 18 grand a year or $1,800 a month. And a lot of people came in at $1,800 a month, which obviously is not a cheap investment. Um, but at the same time, like I talked about when we sold, I was like, it's less than half the cost of a crappy employee, right? Like, and you're getting access to all these coaches and all these things. And, um, so far we've done three or four events.

I'm doing a two day event this month that only them are allowed to come to. And it's, it's, it's expensive, but it's also super cheap. You know what I mean? And, um, and we were talking about some people that dropped out of it for whatever reason. And, and some people have dropped out for legitimate reasons. I totally understand that. But, um, the story I want to tell you today was interesting, was about Steven's sister, uh, Marie. And she joined the program and she was, she's like a group of a bunch of people that joined that probably shouldn't have joined, right?

Like it's like, I think for some people, like it was as much money as they were making at the time and they still just jumped in cause they're like, they saw the vision, they wanted the thing and they jumped in. And so, um, what's interesting is Steven was telling me the story is that, um, like two months into the program, I think it was the second or the third month, the next $1,800 a month payment came up and she was freaking out and, um, and had kind of a thing of just like, Oh my gosh, I'm not making enough money for this. Like, I can't do this. I need to drop out. And she told Steven, like, I can't do this. I need to be out of it. And Steven listened to her talk about like, you know, all the reasons why she needed to drop out. And he's like,

he listened to it. And after, after she got done saying all the reasons why she should drop out, then he said, or you should lean in. And that is the message for today. She said, or you should lean in. Like, what does that mean? So you should lean into it instead of like freaking out. Oh, I can't handle it. I said, let's lean into this, this double down, let's go all in. And when you do, that's what amazing things happen. And to Marie's credit, she did, she leaned in, um, during that time, got through the scary bumpiness and launched her business. And right now her business is doing somewhere between eight and $10,000 a month, which is amazing and insane and so cool. She's helping people launch podcasts.

And like you're, it's like my podcast. If I was working, I would record this. I'd send it to her. Then she was somehow made to magically show up on iTunes, right? My brother does that for me. But that's what she does for people now, and she's killing it, but it's because during the, you know, the turbulent times, they're like, oh, backing out, running away, she leaned in, right? And I want to think about everything great that's ever happened in your life, right? For those who were into sports, think about, like, the hardest times, the times,

and I only know wrestling, quote, I only know wrestling because that's my world, right? But like the times where I needed to cut weight or I had to go against someone who was really, really tough or I lost a match or whatever, like those were the times you want to quit, right? You're like, I'm out. I'm back and just back out and walk away from it. But it was in those times when instead of backing out, I leaned in that I had success. Yesterday, it was kind of fun. We were working on a video and I was like, I need all my old wrestling matches from back in the day.

And so my brother, Scott, he had them all on his hard drive. And so he dumped them all into Google Drive. And so I was looking at all these old videos of me through high school and through college wrestling. And so I was kind of going down this jaunt down memory lane, right? And I saw in there the match my junior year where I lost to this guy named Nick Fresquez, very first match of the season. And I remember, I remember this because we recorded it,

but I think my mom accidentally recorded over it or something like that. But we had like, I don't know, a 22 second clip of that match. And it was when Nick did this move on me that was a move that he beat me with. And I remember my dad used to watch that 22 second clip over and over and over and over again. I would come up and, um, during the season,

I wake up in the mornings and he'd be upstairs watching it and saying, Russell, come here. And he'd sit me down on the carpet and he'd be like, can I show me how to move work? And we would drill it and go the wrestling way. And we drill the move. And like, man, we must watch that 22 second clip of my loss like a thousand times or more during the next four months of the wrestling season and we're practicing practicing practice it and yesterday i found the match of me winning the the state title i remember watching it and seeing as i did that move the same move he did on me to beat me the first season is the same move i use on him to beat him um in the state finals and i was thinking about that. I was like, in context of

this whole concept, Steven shared with me about leaning in. I was just like, man, if I wouldn't have leaned in to that, if I'd been like, oh my gosh, I lost him, had fear and all these things, then I never would have been a state champ, which man, the, the, you know, life circumstances since that moment that brought me to where I am today, you know, all hinged upon that moment. Like, it's kind of crazy if we were to go back in time that far, right? So in sports, like, like the times it was the most painful and the scary and the thing that freaked out about the most is when I leaned in is when greatness came, right? I think about my marriage. Like, I love my wife. I love my kids, but marriage isn't easy. Um, I thought it was going to be, I'm not going to lie. If i was to go back you know to wrestle

20 years ago i was like struggling through life just waiting to be married then everything will be good um my marriage has been amazing um uh but man it's been hard and i think my wife agreed that it was way harder than we thought like and it's those times where it's like hard where it's like man it'd be so easy just like oh, Oh, like, like back out. Like I can't afford them on the payment, boom, back out. Right. But instead I leaned in and was like, I love her. I love, like I've committed to this. I'm doing it. And because of that's how we've made a marriage that wasn't just good with marriages. That's great. Right. Um, I think about in business, like how many times, Oh, how many times I could tell you the stories of me going, you know, building a company and crashing it and building and crashing it. Um, I'm working on, uh, we're doing, uh, this, uh, event in Utah,

the dry bar comedy club in two weeks, I guess it's a week and a half now. And I want to make an outline of like the history of my, my business, right? So I went to the good old way back machine. I tried to find every single funnel that I've ever built. And I forgot how much stuff I've done, how many software products we launched, how many info products, how many courses, how many viral sites, how many list building sites, how many, uh, it's crazy. Um, I haven't finished the list yet. I'm already at 10 pages of links to funnels that I built. And these aren't just like every page in the funnel. Cause I can't, the way back machine way back shows you like snapshots of the websites back as far back as since way back Machine was created.

If you've never used Wayback Machine, by the way, you should go. Go to archive.org. In fact, do this for fun. Go to archive.org. That's Wayback Machine. Type in.comsecrets.com, like my site, and go look at the history of my site. You'll see every variation of Russell over the last 10 years on that site. Every blog I launched on there, everything.

Anyway, it's funny to see the history of these things. the history of these things. And so I went to way back machine and was trying to find all these things and you can't see the upsells down. So, so I could just find the landing page of, of every funnel I've ever created in my life. And it's 10 pages now funnels, right? I'm going through this. I'm laughing at some, some of the worst ideas ever, some that were like completely bombed. Some that I spent literally millions of dollars on that never went live. Um, in fact, there were two or three that I found. I was just like sick to my stomach. I was like, I spent four years of my life. I had six full-time developers. I was paying, I don't know, a million and a half, two million a year for these guys. And none of these ever saw the light of day. Like, Oh, some of them were the precursors to click funnel. They remember

click.com.com was the precursor to ClickFunnels. And I saw this thing, like that was one that we literally spent, I'd say conservatively, man, at least a million, probably closer to two or three million we spent on that thing. And I found all the screenshots, all the everything,

but it never went live. Nobody ever saw it. Oh, but had I not have leaned into that and tried to build that, like we wouldn't be at ClickFunnels today. Right. I think there are like five different software programs recreated. They're all precursors to ClickFunnels.

One was an RSS autoresponder. One was a desktop autoresponder. One was a funnel building software. One was a shopping cart. Like all these things I tried to build that failed. Right. I found the site champion sound. This is like, oh, I was in the

brinks of bankruptcy, right? Literally, like, I just had to fire like 80 of my employees, moved from a 20,000 square foot office to 2,000. I had $150,000 in IRS back taxes I owe. And I was trying to figure out how in the world to save the company and save myself from bankruptcy. And if I would have gone bankrupt, I still had all this outstanding coaching liability. So I would have like destroyed my reputation. So I was like on this thing where if I would have given up, I would have gone to jail and destroyed my reputation. So I was like, I can't give up. I have to lean in. I'm being forced to. And I remember I had, I was on this, um, I was on flippa.com trying to buy a website to try and figure out my future. And like two o'clock in the morning, I saw this site called championsound.com.

It's just plug that in the web app machine. You'll see what it is anyway. But it was an email, text message, autoresponder for bands. And I like oh my gosh this would be the greatest thing in the world i could start this thing we sell to bands but i was like i could read i could like remark or um launch you know like clone the site and launch an email text message autoresponder for dentists and for chiropractors and i was like this is the future of my business so i leaned in took twenty thousand dollars i didn't have bought the website and then what's crazy is when we tried to make it go live um uh or like when after i bought it they tried to transfer it to me to me they're like um i gave them access to my server and like oh no i need a server that can run ruby on rails i was like what's ruby on rails i'm like oh it's

like a different language i'm like what and i'd never even heard that word before and i remember then the development guys i had on top of my team at the time knew Ruby on Rails. I tried to hire people on Odesk to do Ruby on Rails and I couldn't find anyone that could do it. Um, and after three or four months of trying to find somebody who could edit the software because like after they installed it and they left and then like all these things were broken, it wasn't working.

All the customers were like angry and oh, it was horrible. So I literally, um, after about three months that I was like, I just wasted $20,000 we didn't have. I'm like, just shut it down. The servers were like a thousand bucks a month too. They're super expensive. I was like, just shut it down. And I was packing my bags for them. I was walking out.

And as I walked away from my desk, I stopped for a second. I was like, wait a minute. I wonder if there's anyone on my list who knows Ruby on Rails, which is a stupid thing to say. Because at the time, my list was a bunch of like business opportunity seekers and, and they weren't programmers or developers, but I had that thought in my head. So I walked back into my desk, I leaned in, right? Send an email to my list saying, if you know Ruby on Rails, I'm looking for a partner. And that email happened to land in the inbox of, um, somebody who had bought in my micro continuity product like five years earlier, happened to be on my email list.

But because my subject line said Ruby on Rails and partner, he saw that and he said, I'm looking for a partnership with the marketer. I know Ruby on Rails and it was Todd Dickerson who responded back. Anyone who knows my story knows that Todd is my co-founder at ClickFunnels. He's the one who built it.

And had I not bought in Champion Sound, had I not leaned in with the last bit of money we had, had I not tried to get it to work, if I had not, you know, instead of giving up, like if I had not sent an email to my list, if I hadn't done all these little things, that email would never land in Todd Dickerson's inbox and ClickFunnels wouldn't be here today.

And so my message for you guys today is I know that in all areas of your life, there's ups and there's downs. And typically when everything's up in business, something's going to be down somewhere else. Sorry, the guy's blown loose behind me. You know, when you're up in business, you're going to be down in your spiritual life.

When you're up in your spiritual life, your business is going to go down. Or you're up in your personal health, your business will, you know, your marriage will collapse. There's always going to be ups and downs. And I don't think anyone's ever had it where everything's perfect all the time.

So life would be too easy. Um, and so it kind of, it kind of cycles like that. I say, you know, whatever season of your life you're in, where you're in that hard time, instead of like running away from that hard thing, do what Marie said or what Steven said to Marie and be like, lean in. Like, yeah, you could, you could walk away. Yeah. There's a million reasons why you shouldn't do this, but you know, it's right.

You know, it's good. You've committed to it. Let's lean in instead Like, yeah, you could, you could walk away. Yeah. There's a million reasons why you shouldn't do this, but you know, it's right. You know, it's good. You've committed to it. Let's lean in instead of step away. And if you do that, I promise you greatness is on just on the other side of that. If Marie wouldn't have leaned in, where would she be today? Would that company ever be there with all the people she's serving now? Would she be able to serve them? Probably not. Right. If I wouldn't have leaned into sports, whatever, got my, you know, I've become a state champion and all American and in college and end up in Boise where I needed to be to be able to create click funnels. Right?

In my marriage, all the hard times I would have leaned in, would I be where I am today with my amazing wife and amazing kids? Oh, I got the coolest kids in the world. We were, last night we were downstairs because we're redoing our bedroom. So we're sleeping down in the basement right now. And on the big screen, I wanted to show my wife a video. So so show the video and then we started looking at all the videos in our camera

roll and then um somehow i don't even know how this works but somehow on itunes on my on the big screen tv they had all these clips from way back in the day so somehow i got saved to itunes or icloud i don't know something so we're watching these videos of our kids back from like like aiden who's eight years old now these videos of him when he was like a newborn and and there's this one he was probably like uh maybe maybe three years old and he had on Ellie's swimsuit so it's like pink and purple swimsuit and he's dancing and we're like crying laughing I was like watching him dancing and in the video Clet's like Aiden someday we're gonna send this to your wife and he but he's like, Aiden, someday we're going to send this to your wife. And he's like, mom, why don't you send it to her right now? We're just dying, laughing in his little stick legs, dancing in her swimsuit.

And like, oh, I'm sitting there just laughing our faces off. And I was like, man, there were so many times in this marriage where either of us could have walked away, right? So many times in our relationship. And it's like sitting here and just laughing at that and realizing how happy we are and how grateful we are for each other and how grateful we are for our amazing kids, right?

But that didn't come from stepping away from the challenge. It came from leaning in. So there's the message for today. Thank you, Steven Larson, for sharing that with me the other day. He said it kind of in passing, but it had a big impact on me. And I want to share with you guys. And hopefully that will help someone in your moment of struggle in any area of your life. Just remember to lean in.

Thanks so much. And we'll talk to you guys 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.